Re: deeply embedded VSO nightmare

 >From: Matthew Pearson <Matthew.Pearson@...>
 >
 >Many verb-initial natlangs have flexible word order, allowing
 >subjects and objects to permute, at least in special cases. The most
 >obvious solution to your dilemma that I can see is to allow subjects
 >to follow objects if they're especially 'heavy'. Thus:
 >
 >  Lero aldoven na tath daipoth fidial
 >  "The woman walking quickly is going home"

        Possibly.  When I first designed the language, I gave it a
pronounced aversion to separating the V and the S.  Perhaps I could
weaken that a bit.  My tendency now would be to shift 'aldoven' out to
the front if it goes with 'lero.'

 >There shouldn't be any problem with this, since I notice you have
 >case marking in your language.

        Yep.  In theory I could do almost anything to disambiguate,
but I feel that if I'm going to insist that the main word order is
VSO, and the modifiers follow the thingie modified, then there had
better be a good reason to go messing about with the word order.

 >This kind of operation is called 'Heavy-NP Shift', and many

        So, I read this last night, and thought about it for a while.
Strangely, "heavy-NP shift" turned into "heavy-NP *lift*" so I had
this mental image of linguists hanging out in Gold's with other
gym-bunnies talking about heavy-NP lifting and their favorite protein
drinks.

 >However, if the direct object is especially 'heavy', it can shift to
 >a sentence-final position, as shown below.

        This is interesting.  This, and some of the other responses,
gives a very good start on this problem.

--
William Annis  -  System Administrator -  Biomedical Computing Group
"When men are inhuman, take care not to feel towards them as they do
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