Re: (chat) Yoda's word order

--- In conlang@y..., Christopher B Wright <faceloran@J...> wrote:

> He seems to use a sentence order of VOS most of the time ("Help you I
> can").
That's actually an OSV sentence.  "Can" is the finite verb here.  I'm
not quite sure what kind of sentence element "help" is here, probably
some kind of "verb complement".  =P

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.

Mark Rosenfelder still wrongly uses this example in his otherwise
excellent language construction kit at
http://www.zompist.com/kitgram.html#nporder .   =P


-- Christian Thalmann

Reply