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.

Rachel

______________________________________________________________________
Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca

Reply