Re: THEORY: Word Order In Phrases

On Sat, 28 Sep 2002 19:01:51 +0100, Tim May <butsuri@...> wrote:

>Jeff Jones writes:
> > Thanks for finding that! It helps, and I no longer have access to those
> > archives, so I couldn't have found it myself. Unfortunately, your final
> > comment was truncated by listserv.
> >
> > Jeff
> >
>
>They're at http://www.ri.xu.org/conlang/, albeit in somewhat edited
>form.  I'm not sure how the message got truncated - the version sent
>back to me by listserv seems to be okay.  Anyway, you didn't miss
>much, I just said
Thanks again. I've noted the (old) archives' new site. The truncation seems
to be happening only in the (new) archives. Due to the heavy traffic, I'm
set to nomail in case I'm offline unexpectedly and read the messages on the
web.

>>So, it looks like your order is admissable, in the sense that it
>>exists in natural languages.
>
>(I suspect that at least some word order universals are more the
>result of diachronic processes of grammaticalization than of any
>innate preference of the human linguistic faculty,
I think so too.

>so violating them
>doesn't necessarily make a language less speakable, just less
>naturalistic.  The importance of this to a conlang depend on the
>circumstances.  But this order doesn't violate any universals, so
...................................................................
5
4
3
2
1