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Re: Circumfixes?

From:Douglas Koller, Latin & French <latinfrench@...>
Date:Thursday, June 7, 2001, 14:08
David wrote:

> This reminded me of something... In Spanish the word order is SVO, and >sometimes SOV when you get object pronouns thrown in (and, then again, >sometimes not), but here's the one that makes me wonder: "Me gusta la radio". > Here, the subject is the radio, and "I" is the object, so the order, then, >is OVS. What's up with that? >
I should think this is more a pragmatic (if that's the right word) than a grammatical consideration. While it's true that strictly grammatically speaking, it's OVS, due to the nature of the verb "gustar", "to be pleasing", from a pragmatic standpoint it's Mom's apple pie SVO: "I like radio." It seems to me akin to "Mir ist kalt.", "I'm cold." and the antiquated "Me thinks..." (Actually, having just written that...Wasn't this touched on a long while ago on the list?) Kou

Replies

John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Lars Henrik Mathiesen <thorinn@...>
Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>methought (was: Circumfixes?)