Re: Greenberg's Word Order Universals

J Matthew Pearson wrote:
> Greenberg may have been referring to the fact that verb-initial languages almost
> always allow topicalized and/or focussed noun phrases to precede the verb.
W would require a cleft for that, something like:

Faklátassi nús Ján fakassáttas wifkál
Was          John  read        book
It was John who read the book

As opposed to:

Fakassáttas núsal Jánal wifkál
Read         John-erg    book

Does that count for the universal?

Just placing the noun in front would be ungrammatical and quite probably
confusing in running text, as it would sound like "John, who read the
book".  There's no words like "that" or "which" (can't remember the
term), clauses are always verb-initial.

> Greenberg might have been referring to languages where certain body parts have an
> unmarked dual form and a marked singular.  E.g., the most basic form for "eye" in
> the language might be a word meaning "pair of eyes"; to form the word meaning "a
> single eye", an affix would be added.
Ah, that makes sense.  Very interesting idea!

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