Re: Verb-initial languages

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rachel Klippenstein" <estel_telcontar@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2003 9:05 PM
Subject: Re: Verb-initial languages


> --- Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote: > I'd like
> to look at some verb-initial languages to
> > give me some ideas to
> > help out with some aspects of Lindiga grammar. The
> > only ones that I'm
> > vaguely familiar with are Welsh and Irish. I'd
> > especially like to look at
> > some that don't have articles, especially ergative
> > ones. What would be some
> > good languages to look at?
> There is considerable information on properties of
> languages with different basic word orders at
>
http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/people/faculty/dryer/dryer/word.order.shopen.
pdf
> For verb-initial languages, it mentions:
> 1. Fijian (Austronesian family) (apparently VSO or
> VOS, without case marking, so subjects and objects are
> distinguished by context!!!), which has articles and
> apparently no cases.
> 2. Turkana ("in the Nilotic subfamily of Nilo-Saharan
> and spoken in Kenya")(VSO), which apparently has
> nominateve/accusative case marking and no articles.
> 3. Lealao Chinantec ("an Oto-Manguean language spoken
> in Mexico") (VOS) which apparently has no articles; I
> couldn't tell about case.
> I have no idea if information about these languages is
> actually accessible to an ordinary person.
>
> > In particular, right now I'm trying to figure out
> > what to do with "to be".
>
> It seems to say that the order of copula and predicate
> tends to parallel the order of verb and object, but
> says nothing about how this fits with the subject.
>

I thought it was the other way round, at least, in Celtic. -

ie. 'Joseph ydw i'(Welsh) and 'Joseph of vy'(Cornish(Unified)).