Re: Greenberg's universals for SVO languages & Caos Pidgin ruff-sketch

Jonathon Change wrote:

>    According to Greenberg's Universals (1963) SVO languages are:
[snip universals]

>    etc. (in another words, the "universal" tendency of SVO languages - as
>opposed to Mandarin and English - is to be right-branching, right/eh?)
>
>    Is there any other "universals" or tendencies I should be aware of?
Here's a few more.

-- case is less common, and when present, usually doesn't not follow an
ergative pattern.
-- often have definite articles (OV languages tend not to).
-- demonstratives, numerals, and adjectives follow the noun in that order or
the opposite order (adj, num, dem)
-- often have relative pronouns
-- conjunctions is of the form "X and X" rather than "and X and X" or "X and X
and", the former is rare, the later is (possibly) unattested.
-- prefixes are common for tense, case, etc.  There are always some suffixes
though.
-- Subordinate clauses are often finite (e.g., "I want he goes" rather than "I
want him to go").

Of course, as somebody pointed out in another message, universals are just
statistics.  I know of no absolute universals except things like "All
languages
have vowels".  There are some I haven't seen counter-examples to, but those
could be just because I haven't seen enough languages yet.





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Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
  -- Kenneth Hale
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