Re: THEORY: Word Order In Phrases

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

>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, 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
it seems to be okay in any case.)