Re: VSO languages

>Jonathan Chang wrote:
>>
>> 10-15% of the world's languages are VSO (i.e. Welsh, Hawaii'an, Classical
>> Arabic,
>> Tongan, Squamish, Berber, etc. - quite a few isolate languages, I imagine)
>
>And, more importantly, ea-luna. :)
And Tokana (basically VSO, but with a great deal of variation therefrom).

In response to Doug's query:  I've been racking my brains, thinking of all
of the verb-initial language families I've been exposed to (Polynesian,
Western Austronesian, Salishan, Mayan, Celtic, Semitic, Nilotic) and in
all of these except one (see below), noun phrases may be preceded by
something which could loosely be called a "determiner".  In some languages
these determiners mark definiteness (Hebrew, Malagasy), in others they
mark case (Tagalog), in others they mark noun class (Tz'utujil), and in
others they mark all three (Thompson Salish).  So, if you interpret
"determiner" broadly, then there may be some sort of correlation.

The one counterexample I was able to come up with was the Oto-
Manguean languages (includes the various languages commonly grouped
together as "Zapotec" and "Mixtec"):  These are strictly VSO, but have
no determiners, articles, or prenominal case markers of any kind.  So
if there is a correlation, it's not a perfect one.

Tokana, incidentally, goes with the flow:  It has prenominal determiners,
which mark case, person/number, animacy, and definiteness.  They also
function as pronouns when there's no noun following them.

Matt.