Re: Verb-second ... verb-penultimate languages?

Yahya Abdal-Aziz wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Apr 2006, Jim Henry wrote:
> [snip]
>
>>Does anyone know of any verb-penultimate languages?
>>I suppose they would be VS in intransitive sentences,
>>SVO in transitive, and SOVA where there is a sentential adverb;
>>maybe SOVR (source/recipient last) in ditransitive sentences?
>>Part of me suspects this is unnatural, and yet it doesn't seem any
>>odder w.r.t. V2 languages than OVS or OSV languages, which
>>do exist in small numbers.
>>------------------------------
>
>
> How would this work?  To get an idea of it, I need to
> create an example or two.
>
[examples snipped]

> An example that is not subject-final is a little harder for me
> to envisage.
I agree.

As I understand it, the so-called V2 languages, it's really: TOPIC +
VERB + REST OF SENTENCE.

Of course the topic is more often the the grammatical subject; but when
the topic is not the subject, we front the topic and the grammatical
subject is 'tucked away' after the verb.

To have a "verb-penult" language, it would seem to me that we would have
a 'topic final' language, where the verb precedes the topic. Often this
would be the grammatical subject. Where the topic was different from the
grammatical subject, the language would presumably finish the sentence
with 'subject-verb-topic.'

It seems to me, however, that pushing the topic to the end of a sentence
or clause is a very odd thing to do. There are examples of putting focus
last, but that's a different matter & not all sentences have focus.

>>
>>So far as I've gathered, it's thought to be impossible.  I'd greatly
>>like to run across one, but I never have.
>
>
> I don't think it impossible, just likely to be unstable.
I know from experience that it is dangerous to state dogmatically that
this or that feature is linguistically impossible. The next thing you
know is that someone find an example of just such a feature. But I find
it difficult to envisage just how such a language would work or, indeed,
how the situation would come about. If for some reason, such a feature
did evolve in a language I think Yahya is right in saying it is likely
it would be unstable.

--
Ray
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