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Postpostional verb-initial langs (was: Conlang Typology Survey Results -- 2nd Chance!

From:Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...>
Date:Sunday, November 21, 1999, 22:14
Nik Taylor wrote:
>Interesting. AFAIK, there are no natlangs with postpositions and VSO >order.
They do exist, but are extremely rare. Yagua, the only surviving member=20 of the Peba-Yaguan languages spoken in the amazon basin of Peru is just=20 such a language. On the other side of the same continent is another=20 called Guajajara of the Tupi-Guarani family. I wonder, is this a=20 specifically South American phenomenon? Both of these languages that I have listed are quite unusual in word- order in general. Greenberg would call them type 8 - that is; verb- initial, post-positional, genitive before head, attributive adjective=20 after head. To my knowledge, only Yagua is confirmed as type 8.=20 Linguists are still debating about Guajajara. Incidentally, Boreanesian is a type 8 language too. Dirk, I get the=20 feeling that Tepa is a type 8 language too, no? -kristian- 8)