Re: "Free" word order (was Re: Greek definite article (was Re: Addendum: a holy spirit))

Henrik Theiling wrote:

> In Russian I read that
> reordering is interesting.  I think I once read a sentence similar
> to:
>
>    Ja    tybja   znaju  shto ljubju.
>    I-NOM you-ACC know-1 that love-1
>
> Maybe someone can verify that this is right.  If so, I find the shift
> of 'tybja' from the subordinary clause quite remarkable.
No, this is clearly ungrammatical. I have never heard a part of subordinate
clause shift to the main clause.
The above sentence may exist in several variants, playing with different
word orders and intonation patterns that I'm not ready to describe them all.
The most normal / neutral variant would be:

Я знаю, что люблю тебя. - |Ya znayu chto lyublyu tebya|,

with so called "logical accent" (a specific intonation pattern) on _lyublyu_
in neutral mode, or on _tebya_ if I need to contrast ("It's you, not Svetka,
whom I love").

ObConlang: My Kuman Tyli has some pragmaticly meaningful word order shifts,
putting the rhema immediately before the predicate (that is usually final),
but I had no chance to develop this.

-- Yitzik

Reply