Re: Kosi grammar sketch

--On Saturday, April 24, 2004 5:58 PM -0400 Trebor Jung
<treborjung@...> wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Trebor1990/Kosi
A very interesting lang, although I have two comments to make:

1) Syllable structure is (C)V(C), yet the genitive of 'has' is 'hast'.

2) Basic word order is VSO, yet the relative clause precedes the noun. I
don't think there are any natlangs that work that way, or if there are I
haven't heard of them. VSO languages tend to be head-first, so they usually
have certain traits like prepositions, post-nominal adjectives, and
post-nominal relative clauses. The tendency to put relative clauses after
the noun is so strong that even SOV languages (which are usually head-final
and often strictly so, i.e. Tamil or Japanese) often place it there.

Levi Tooker
lrtooker@buffalo.edu