Re: Greenberg's universals

Jim Hopkins wrote:

>Not being a trained linguist I am not familiar with Greenberg's Universals
>but I am gathering that Druni (being an SOV language) violates quite a few of
>them.
I've yet to see a natlang that doesn't.

>That may have a lot to do with the way that I created Druni.  Basically I
>took features that I liked from all the languages that I knew.  Then I
>fleshed it all out by creating words that had the type of sound that I liked.
> Obviously, a very amateur way of doing things but I am happy with the
result.
>What is the easiest way to get a copy of Greenberg's Universals?
Go to your local university library and look him up (Joseph H. Greenberg).  It
would be even easier and probably better in general just to skip his stuff and
go for more recent work.  "Language Universals & Linguistic Typology" by
Bernard Comire is very good.  The drawback to it (IMHO) is that it only deals
with grammar.  William Croft's book "Typology and Universals" deals with
almost
every aspect of language (phonology, grammar, semantics, diachrony, etc.).  An
excellent book - I highly recommend it.






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Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
  -- Kenneth Hale
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