Re: phrase's order

On 27 Dec 2004, at 6.11 pm, Philip Newton wrote:

> On Mon, 27 Dec 2004 01:06:30 -0500, # 1 <salut_vous_autre@...>
> wrote:
>> In frensh, the order will be SVO if the object is a noun or an
>> adjective
>>
>> "Je mange une pomme" I eat an apple
>> "J'aime ma femme" I love my wife
>> "Je deviens vieux" I become old
>>
>> but if the object is a pronoun it will become SOV
>>
>> "Je la mange" I eat it(feminine, like "pomme")
>> "Je t'aime" I love you
>> "Je le deviens" I become it
>
> And if you have an indirect object pronoun, it can be either S-DO-IO-V
> ("Je le lui donne") or S-IO-DO-V ("Il me le donne")!
>
> (And I'm not sure of the order if there's no third person involved --
> does "Elle me te donne" mean "She gives you to me" or "She gives me to
> you"? I'm guessing the former, though, i.e. S-IO-DO-V order in thie
> case.)
>
> I wonder why this order came about, i.e. third person IO pronouns
> coming last instead of first.
Latin, I thought, was SOV, so wouldn't it be how the other order came
about?---and I believe that French had a V2 phase, so that could easily
answer that. Unless of course other Romance languages can't say the
same for themselves.

Incidentally, in OE, which is generally a V2 language, if the object
was a pronoun, it could come before the verb, which would then be in
the third position (in some cases, the verb could even be in the forth
position). e.g. (from
<http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kroch/omev2-html/node6.html>):
   5a. þin  agen geleafa þe  hæfþ gehæledne (BlHom 15)
       your own  faith   you has  healed
   5b. &   seofon ærendracan he him hæfde to asend (ASC, Parker, 905)
       and seven  messengers he him had   to send
(Sorry, can't expand the sources, nor promise the abbrevs are correct,
the images they come from aren't very clear.)

--
Tristan.

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