Re: Word order (Was: Conlangs of mischief (Which in turn was: Re: I'm back!)

Ray wrote:

<<It is a problem - it's an impossibility if we are producing sounds
serially or writing in any way that is recognized as writing. The sounds
(and characters) come one after another, i.e. there is an order.>>

Oh, oops.   I of course meant "totally free word order".   If words
*couldn't* be ordered, then, logically, they couldn't very well be
produced, could they?   My bad.   :)

<<"Doesn't even have a preferential word order" seems to me that you expect
a language to have preferential orderings even if it allows a high degree
of freedom in the ordering of words. I would agree with that.>>

And it's what most have agreed on, from what I've heard.   Anyway, though,
now this has got me thinking: Is it the *word* order that's free in this
language,
or the *constituent* order?   I mean, even in English, in certain cases, you
can
figure the sentence out with free word order:

"Him see I."

But I can't imagine a language where you could take, for example:

"The man on the roof gave a book with a blue cover to an unhappy girl in the
garden."

And produce:

"The a a an the on the in man roof to with blue gave garden book unhappy
cover girl."

Even if every element was so explicitly marked that there was no way of
confusing
which elements formed constituents and which didn't.

Though, I once did have an idea for a freak lang where if your
sentence was going to have three prepositions, four adjectives, five
nouns, a verb, and some particles, they all had to be fit into a preset
order, so that all the particles came first, then the prepositions, then
the adjectives, then the nouns, and then the verbs, and how they were
ordered told you which went with which.

-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/

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