Re: Italian Particles

Tim Smith wrote:

> >Yry firrimby (ry).  As for me, grateful I.  Instead of:
> >        Firrimby ry.
> >
> >Yryi il jentwar ry cosa.  As for me, the door I closed.  Instead of
> >just:
> >                Il jentwar ry cosa.
> >
> >
> >Likewise:
> >
> >Le massalan androfaith twav.  The chairs, beautiful they.  Instead of:
> >                androfaith le massalan.
> >
> >With most active verbs, though, the T. requires that there be a
> >resumption of the pronoun just before the verb.  It can't let go of
> >final subject-verb syntax.
> >
> >I suppose I will have to figure out just how this is working to create
> >emphasis, but for now it's an option.  I'm sorta pleased with it
> >because it's one of several few things that "happened" to Teonaht
> >naturally instead of synthetically... it has the feel of a real
> >development, along with the prefixed tense particles of ten years
> >ago.
>
> It sounds to me as if what's happening is that Teonaht is "giving in" to
> the very widespread cross-linguistic tendency for the topic to go at the
> beginning of the sentence, or as close to the beginning as other
> constraints allow.  (I say "widespread" but not "universal", because I know
> of at least one clear counterexample: Malagasy, where the topic generally
> goes at the end.)  Thus, in "free word order" languages (which really means
> languages in which word order is determined by pragmatic rather than
> syntactic factors), the topic generally goes first, and in the great
> majority of "fixed word order" languages (where the order is syntactically
> determined), the subject goes first (the subject having a higher
> probability of being the topic than any other constituent).
>
> There's a reason why languages with dominant OSV order are extremely rare.
What's that reason, Tim?  Why can't the human brain be perfectly capable
of
thinking object first instead of subject first?

        Rain, I like it.  Small step to:  Rain I like.
        The door, I closed it.  The T say:  The door I closed.

When they want to emphasize who it is closes the door or likes the rain,
they
say:

        Me, rain I like.  Me, the door I closed.

Want the verb emphasized?  Closing of door I did.  (Where "of" is a
"respect"
particle).

I wish I could find some info on OSV languages, so I could see how they
function in real life.  Teonaht is so entrenched, and the OSV structure
is
so much a part of elite written language that I'm not going to change
it;
but Menarilish will be more specifically SOV.  What the Teonaht write
and
what they say in the pub are different things.

> The fact that this drift away from OSV order has happened "naturally" to
> Teonaht seems to suggest that your subconscious mind is responding to this
> tendency, even contrary to your conscious intent.
It seemed fairly conscious... I just couldn't THINK object first.  I
couldn't
give directions to the cat in T.

Sally
--
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SALLY CAVES
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Niffodyr tweluenrem lis teuim an.
"The gods have retractible claws."
                                from _The Gospel of Bastet_
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