Re: USAGE: Classification questions

Mark Reed palsalge
>This is really about linguistics more than usage, but I'm curious
>about classification of languages in edge cases.    I apologize for
>showing my ignorance, but I'm sure someone on here can help clear
>things up. :)
No problem with showing ignorance. Once you do, it tends to go away and
have a sulk for a while. Unless you're me, of course, in which case it
remains. 8-|

>For instance, the Romance languages are SVO if the object is a noun,
>SOV if the object is a pronoun.  Which order is considered the
>fundamental one?
I'd say that the fundamental order is SVO, with SOV being a relic of Latin.

>It also seems that there's a very fine line between agglutination and
>inflection, since many inflections can be analyzed as
>
>        (root + original suffix) - original suffix + new suffix
>
>And often the suffix is universally applicable to other roots.
>For instance, in Latin the verb suffix -o means "first person
>present indicative".  You can argue that it's not agglutination
>because the -o isn't further analyzable into a piece that means
>"first person", one that means "present", and one that means
>"indicative".  But then what about the Klingon verb prefixes,
>which each convey the person and number of both the subject and the
>direct object but are not analyzable into subject and object pieces?
>What makes Klingon verb conjugation agglutinative while Latin is
>inflected?
I'm not familiar with Klingon, but many of the uninitiated make no
distinction between agglutinating and inflecting. Looking at a Klingon
grammar sketch (one that seems unsure of itself), it has a few
agglutinating features such as compounding verb with indirect object
pronoun.

>Can someone help me see the light?
Oh, sure, a luminescent bias. It's the "differently dark"!

~Wright

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