Re: (chat) Yoda's word order

At 6:26 PM +0200 05/28/02, Christian Thalmann wrote:
>There's a similar phenomenon in German, where non-finite parts of the
>verbal phrase are often placed at the end of the sentence:
>
>Er hat mich zum Glück trotz aller Bemühungen nicht finden können.
>
>Literally:
>
>"He has me fortunately despite all efforts not find can."
>
>Meaning:
>
>Fortunately, he hasn't been able to find me, despite all efforts.
>
>The information-carrying verb is "finden", placed at the very end
>of the sentence.  Nevertheless, the sentence exhibits SVO structure,
>since "können" and "finden" are both infinitives, while the finite
>verb "hat" comes right after the subject.
Since 'finden' is the "information-carrying verb," the sentence is
properly seen as SOV with a second position auxiliary, which is
obligatory in main clauses for this tense/aspect combination. In that
respect, it is not unlike Uto-Aztecan languages like Luiseño and
Tohono O'odham, which must also place tense/aspect information in the
second position of the sentence. The difference is that lexical
(i.e., information-carrying) verbs in German may carry all of the
tense/aspect information themselves for certain tense and aspect
combinations and do not require auxiliary support in those cases.

>Mark Rosenfelder still wrongly uses this example in his otherwise
>excellent language construction kit at
>http://www.zompist.com/kitgram.html#nporder .   =P
I don't consider it to be wrong, for the reason given above.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                  Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

Man deth swa he byth thonne he mot swa he wile.
'A man does as he is when he can do what he wants.'

- Old English Proverb

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