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

H.S.Teoh menulis:
>Malay (Bahasa Melayu) is an SVO language too. In fact, AFAIK, the two are
>grammatically 90% identical, and 80% of the vocabulary is identical.
>Interestingly, now that you mention it, it's very true that possessives
>are noun-genitive. Nouns aren't really inflected for the genitive, but
>it's understood that way, eg.:
>        keretanya = his/her car (kereta, car, + 3rd person suffix -nya)
>        kereta Abu = Abu's car.
Di Indonesia, katanya _mobil_.  Kereta2 dihela oleh kerbau atau kuda.......

>
>And yes, prepositions are used:
>        dia dari kampung - he/she(dia) is[0] from(dari) the
village(kampung)
>and modifiers follow nouns:
>        kereta baik - good(baik) car(kereta)
>        rumah putih - white(putih) house(rumah)
>
>Not so sure about question particles tho... but they *do* lean towards the
>front of the sentence:
>        ke mana dia pergi? - where did he go, literally, "to where he
goes?"
>However, this trend exists mainly in formal written language; in spoken
>Malay, the above question tends to become:
>        dia pigi mana? - he goes where? (pigi = colloquial slang for
"pergi")

I think "pigi" is a very amusing word, but the few times I used it, I got
dirty looks-- unfortunately, it's associated with the Chinese, there.

The Q-word that throws most Americans is apa 'what'-- which, if object,
generally goes in the object position-- dia makan apa? "what's he eating?".
You can front it, but that requires the passive, to be "correct"-- apa
dimakannya?  Plenty of people say apa dia makan? with that meaning, but
technically it means "is he eating?"
>(snip)
>Eeek! *shuddering in recollections of horror of being forced to learn a
>language that isn't really useful outside of Malaysia/Indonesia today*
Sad but true.  Still, it has inspired at least two conlangs-- my Kash, and
Lasailly's (IIRC) Tunu.