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Rigidity of Word Order in English | ||
Tags: Syntax | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4292 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 1 of 15 29 June 2013 at 6:42am | IP Logged | ||
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I have noticed that in English, the word order is usually fixed and inflexible compared
to other Germanic languages (or in comparison to Romance languages if one wants to consider it a psuedo-Romance language due to vocabulary). For example the sentence, "He told me that he had eaten." in Dutch I think could be, Dutch: Hij heeft me verteld dat hij had gegeten. Hij heeft me verteld dat hij gegeten had Hij me heeft verteld dat hij gegeten had. Hij me heeft verteld dat hij had gegeten. Heeft me verteld hij dat had gegeten hij. Heeft me verteld hij dat gegeten had hij. Had hij gegeten heeft mij verteld hij. Had hij gegeten heeft mij hij verteld. Had hij gegeten heeft hij verteld mij. There may be more, but that is all of which I can think for now. Spanish (using proximate presente de perfecto instead of the pretérito, and also -ra form of imperfecto de subjuntivo for pluscuamperfecto): Él me ha dicho que había comido. Me ha dicho él que había comido. Me ha dicho que había comido él. Había comido me ha dicho él. Había comido él me ha dicho. Él me ha dicho que comiera. Me ha dicho él que comiera. Me ha dicho que comiera él. Comiera me ha dicho él. Comiera él me ha dicho. Portuguese: Ele disse-me que comera. Disse-me ele que comera. Disse-me que comera ele. Comera ele disse-me. Ele comera disse-me. Ele me disse que comera. Me disse ele que comera. Comera ele me disse. Ele comera me disse. Italian: Lui mi ha detto che aveva mangiato. Mi ha detto che lui aveva mangiato. Mi ha detto lui che aveva mangiato. Mi ha detto che aveva mangiato lui. Aveva mangiato mi ha detto lui. Aveva mangiato lui mi ha detto. But in English it seems that the onyl word order is as such. The only other word order of which I can think could possibly be, although slightly odd, would be, "Told me he that he had eaten" or something similar like, "He told me that eaten had he". However, this order seems to be more suitable for a novel or literature. My Swedish is not good enough to construct this sentence unfortunately, and I never had studied German. But other languages seem to have more flexibility for the order of words. I am not sure how Old English was with regard to this issue. In that manner perhaps it would be interesting what Icelandic speakers do here. Still I am not sure why the word order is so rigid in English compared to its neighbouring languages (Germanic family, and perhaps to a lesser degree, Romance family). Edited by 1e4e6 on 29 June 2013 at 6:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4705 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 2 of 15 29 June 2013 at 7:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Not all those Dutch sentences work. I'm pretty sure that only the first two are correct
("Hij heeft me verteld dat hij had gegeten"; "Hij heeft me verteld dat hij gegeten had"). The second puts a little more emphasis on the fact that the action was eating. Dutch, like English, has mostly lost its cases. So word order is actually fairly strict. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5601 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 3 of 15 29 June 2013 at 7:05am | IP Logged | ||
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You cannot jumble the word in any of these languages as liberal as you think. Some sentences sound really stange (try Latin if you like these jigsaw puzzles).
PS. Spanish uses redundancy to allow different sentence structures (I won't sell this house to you): Esta casa no te la vendo. Esta casa no te la vendo a ti. Yo esta casa no te la vendo a ti. Yo esta casa a ti no te la vendo. Yo a ti esta casa no te la vendo. A ti yo esta casa no te la vendo. Esta casa no te la vendo a ti yo. Esta casa no te la vendo yo a ti. Esta casa yo no te la vendo a ti French uses colloquially extrapositions: Cette robe, je la trouve trop chère. Partir en vacance, cela me passionne. Edited by Cabaire on 29 June 2013 at 7:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4846 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 4 of 15 29 June 2013 at 11:08am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know why you post the same topic two times, 1e4e6... The sentences you construct are still grammatically wrong.
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| simonov Senior Member Portugal Joined 5591 days ago 222 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English | Message 5 of 15 29 June 2013 at 11:22am | IP Logged | ||
That's what I also thought. The first time they were also mostly wrong. Why hasn't anybody yet told the OP to first think, then check for correctness, and finally, in case he found his 'opinion' to be valid, present it to the forum? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 6 of 15 29 June 2013 at 12:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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And in Spanish, you don't always (or rather very often) need to put the subject (él) to the sentence.
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| simonov Senior Member Portugal Joined 5591 days ago 222 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English | Message 7 of 15 29 June 2013 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | ||
Why bring up the unimportant? Using the pronoun 'él' didn't make his sentences total rubbish, just emphasised the "he". Nothing wrong with that, if that is what he wanted. Anyway, his post is about word-order, not use of subject pronouns. @Марк Thanks for pointing out my silly misprint. Edited! Edited by simonov on 30 June 2013 at 9:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5058 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 8 of 15 29 June 2013 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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