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Is SVO the most natural word order? | ||
Tags: Multilingual | Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| LanguagePhysics Newbie United States Joined 4131 days ago 34 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 21 05 September 2013 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | ||
I was reading an article on Wikipedia about word order, and I noticed on the SVO page it states;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject_Verb_Object I find this interesting, because even Papiamento, which is basically a Spanish/Portuguese creole uses SVO in all cases, when Spanish and Portuguese would be SOV in some cases, such as with indirect object pronouns. I do wonder whether many Caribbean creoles are SVO because their original speakers were slaves from West Africa who would have natively spoken Niger-Congo and Bantu languages, most of which are SVO. So rather than SVO being more innately obvious, I think it is more likely that the strictly SVO structure of Caribbean creoles arose from West African slaves communicating using the vocabulary of various European languages with the grammatical structure of their own native languages. What do you think? Edited by LanguagePhysics on 05 September 2013 at 1:32pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4692 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 21 05 September 2013 at 1:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't find SVO a good descriptor of word order. Nor SOV. More often what comes before
what is determined on a more micro-level than that, and more often variants are allowed that have a different meaning or nuance. And they can change due to influences from other parts of the sentence than a subject/object/verb, especially if the alignment is different between S/O. What is Breton, which has the verb in second position, but can have basically anything in first (because first position is what renders emphasis)? SVO? VSO? OVS? It can be anything really. Much more useful to say word order in Breton is "sentence topic first". In Dutch the verb comes first in question phrases, second in declarative statements, last if dealing with a participle or a subclause. Is Dutch SVO? SOV? V2? It's really any of these three because all situations are alarmingly regular! And you can also have VSO, OVS, which all give another semantic meaning. Russian or Latin, which are SVO/SOV "nominally" but really can be anything? It's much more interesting to know which part of the phrase gives the emphasis. "Vandaag ga ik naar de bioscoop" means "Today I'm going to the chinema". "Ik ga vandaag naar de bioscoop" means Today I am going to the cinema, I didn't go yesterday. "Ik ga naar de bioscoop vandaag" means "I am going to the cinema today" (and not to the store). All perfectly fine word orders. Dutch is SVO, but the first one is the neutral sentence (which has the verb before the subject, and there is no object!) So is it really useful to say that Dutch is SVO when very common situations put it somewhere else, and changing word order renders emphasis? Edited by tarvos on 05 September 2013 at 1:45pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6644 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 3 of 21 05 September 2013 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's natural to those of us who speak English.
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 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6894 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 21 05 September 2013 at 10:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Some years ago, I told someone I was studying Mandarin, and that I found it difficult.
Reaction: -But, isn't it just plain SVO? (Maybe it is, but similarities end there.) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4275 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 5 of 21 06 September 2013 at 2:53am | IP Logged | ||
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The seems to change more in Dutch than in any other language I have studied. Along with
the mix of orders in the principal clause, the addition of subordinate and relative clauses, direct and indirect objects, can switch the order From the example above, add some clauses: "Ik ga vandaag naar de bioscoop" SV "Ik ga vandaag naar de bioscoop, maar ga ik morgen met mijn zusje naar de boekwinkel" SV, VSO (I go to the cinema today, but tomorrow shall I go to the bookstore with my sister) "Ik ga vandaag naar de bioscoop, maar ga ik morgen met mijn zusje naar de boekwinkel zodat kan ik om mij een schaakboek te gaan kopen" SV, VSO, V1SOV2V3 (I go to the cinema today, but tomorrow shall I go to the bookstore with my sister in order to buy myself a chessbook) "Als genoeg geld te hebben, en alvorens we de verslagen te schrijven, ga ik vandaag naar de bioscoop, maar ga ik morgen met mijn zusje naar de boekwinkel zodat kan ik om mij een schaakboek te gaan kopen, en nadat zullen we om het naar de schaakclub te lezen" OV, SOV, VS, VSO, V1SOV2V3, V1SOV2 I think I may have committed some errors, but I meant to say that the order changes with quite some frequency in Dutch compared to the other languages I study. Edited by 1e4e6 on 06 September 2013 at 5:04am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4651 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 6 of 21 06 September 2013 at 4:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Here’s a counterexample for you – Sri Lankan Malay Creole. This language is/was spoken by Malay immigrants to Sri Lanka. The dominant languages in Sri Lanka, Sinhala and Tamil, are SOV, as is generally the case in South Asia. Malay is SVO. It turns out that SLMC has adopted the word order that is typical for the area – SOV. So instead of ‘Amat makan nasi’ – ‘Amat eats rice’ in Malay – in SLMC you’d say ‘Amat nasi makan’ – ‘Amat rice eats.’ SLMC follows the word order of the local languages instead of Malay in other ways too – it uses postpositions instead of prepositions for instance.
This suggests that word order is to a large extent an areal feature. Creole languages may be simpler than other languages, but that doesn’t mean they reflect some kind of primal/innate state of language. Since they come about in situations of language contact, looking closely at the sociohistorical context of their formation is crucial, as you suggest. Here’s a paper on Sri Lankan Malay Creole: SLMC Edited by viedums on 06 September 2013 at 6:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4692 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 7 of 21 06 September 2013 at 9:46am | IP Logged | ||
But all of those sentences except the first one are wrong. They don't even make any sense in Dutch. The correct sentences (and I mean ONLY) correct sentences are: Ik ga vandaag naar de bioscoop, maar (ik ga) morgen met mijn zusje naar de boekwinkel. (Maar does not invert verb and subject - it's a conjunction, not an adverbial of time or place). Ik ga vandaag naar de bioscoop, maar morgen met mijn zusje naar de boekwinkel om een schaakboek te kopen Als ik genoeg geld heb, en alvorens we de verslagen geschreven hebben, ga ik vandaag naar de bioscoop, maar ga ik morgen met mijn zusje naar de boekwinkel om een schaakboek te kopen, om het daarna bij de schaakclub te lezen" None of your word orders are even remotely correct. They are nonsensical, all the grammatical structures are all over the place (random te's in positions that don't make sense, improper use of conjunctions and linking words, which may or may not influence word order depending on subclause or not). Word order is variable, but not THAT variable in Dutch. Edited by tarvos on 06 September 2013 at 9:54am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4829 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 8 of 21 06 September 2013 at 11:32am | IP Logged | ||
It's the same in German, although some details in word order are different from Dutch. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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