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Re: THEORY: Natural language change (was Re: Charlie and I)

From:Thomas R. Wier <artabanos@...>
Date:Tuesday, September 21, 1999, 21:56
Charles wrote:

> I can't see how the Romans lived without punctuation, or > the Japanese today,
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time I saw a modern Japanese text, it included Western forms of punctuation.
> even putting verbs strictly last ... > but maybe that is really a major advantage of SOV typology.
Well... how is that any different from putting subjects strictly first? That's pretty close to the current state in English. Besides, I don't think sytntax or morphology have much to do with orthographical conventions. Spoken speech rarely has highly marked punctuations anyways: it's just a string of phonemes operating according to particular rules. The orthographic conventions are quite separate, if you think about it. ======================================================= Tom Wier <artabanos@...> ICQ#: 4315704 AIM: Deuterotom Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/> "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero." Denn wo Begriffe fehlen, Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein. -- Mephistopheles, in Goethe's _Faust_ ========================================================