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Is SVO the most natural word order? | ||
Tags: Multilingual | Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4713 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 9 of 21 06 September 2013 at 12:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah, we have some situations in subclauses where we don't (necessarily) put a verb at
the end, whereas for you it's obligatory. And I think there may be some more differences on a detailed micro-level. But usually the places where we stress words are more or less the same too "Heute gehe ich ins Kino/Vandaag ga ik naar de bioscoop" and the word order changes induce pretty much the same shifts in meaning. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4834 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 10 of 21 06 September 2013 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
But now he's been corrected, and I'm sure you'd like to encourage him to keep trying his Dutch fearlessly not worrying about mistakes, because it's by mistakes that we learn. As a matter of interest, and so that we can all learn a bit, why in your last example, is the "ga ik" inverted after "maar"? ( in "maar ga ik morgen met mijn zusje naar de boekwinkel om een schaakboek te kopen," ) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4713 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 11 of 21 06 September 2013 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Because it's continuing the word order from the previous subclause.
If you put a subclause before the main verb (with alvorens...), then afterwards you get an inversion (ga ik). Because maar tacks on to the "ga ik" you have to stay in that word order. {stuff}, {alvorens...} --> demands inversion if put in front --> "ga ik...." "maar ga ik..." (because it refers to the main sentence) Edited by tarvos on 06 September 2013 at 5:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4672 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 12 of 21 07 September 2013 at 7:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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So it seems that word order in Dutch is complex, rather like German if Josquin is correct. How would Afrikaans, a language that some linguists treat as a creole, behave in comparison? Has word order simplified? Is it more rigidly SVO? If so, Afrikaans would be analogous to the creole mentioned by LanguagePhysics. And if we couldn't find any motivating factors in the contact situation, perhaps SVO really is a sort of default order. Thoughts or comments anyone?
Edited by viedums on 07 September 2013 at 7:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4713 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 13 of 21 08 September 2013 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As far as I know, word order in Afrikaans is almost the same as that of Dutch. It isn't
a creole really. It's a developed variant of Dutch with lexical influence from other sources. Dutch and German word order differ only on minute details, in subclauses the rules vary a bit. In German you are also able to use more impersonal expressions than in Dutch due to the case system. Keep in mind though, that the dialect continuum between both Dutch and Afrikaans (which only established itself as a separate entity in the early 20th century) and that between Dutch and German used not to be very strictly marked. Until some hundred years ago, when the standard language developed such that everyone started to be taught standard Dutch in schools and everyone became literate, the country boundaries only marked a geographical distinction. They were important to cartographers, not to linguists. The northeast of the country speaks Low Saxon dialects, closely related to the Low German on the other side. The North is influenced by Frisian (and some speak Frisian still). Afrikaans is based on Hollandic dialects and converges based on the Hollandic dialect of the settlers that went to South Africa. This is pretty important in its cultural history. Afrikaans itself retains good intelligibility with Dutch. I wouldn't treat speaking and understanding Afrikaans any differently from the way I'd treat someone who spoke a pure Flemish or Limbourg or Groningen dialect. Only it now has its own orthography. Edited by tarvos on 08 September 2013 at 10:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4672 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 14 of 21 09 September 2013 at 4:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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I don’t know much about either Dutch or Afrikaans. Here is a quote from the UCLA Germanic Languages department website which seems to be stressing the differences between the two.
“Afrikaans is a West Germanic language and is spoken in South Africa by approximately 6 million people of all races. It shows many characteristics of a Creole language and is considered to have developed from contact between the various languages spoken at the Cape of Good Hope in the 17th century: Dutch dialects, French, Malayo-Portuguese, and indigenous Khoikhoi languages. Though closely related, Dutch and Afrikaans are by no means ‘the same’ and may perhaps be considered as similar (or dissimilar) as Spanish and French. Needless to say, modern linguists take much delight in studying the similarities and differences between Dutch and Afrikaans and even within Dutch itself.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t elaborate on exactly what the putative “Creole characteristics” might be. Presumably some kind of simplification took place, if not in word order than elsewhere. And note the hedging around the comparison with Spanish/French! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4713 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 15 of 21 09 September 2013 at 9:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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Spanish/French is a terrible comparison. Spanish/Portuguese hits much closer to home. I
don't need to study Afrikaans to read the Wikipedia. But yes, Afrikaans has a much simpler grammar (less tenses). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7162 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 16 of 21 09 September 2013 at 5:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would even venture that Afrikaans/Dutch is closer to English/(broad) Lowland Scots than Spanish/Portuguese. The analogy of Spanish/French is indeed poor and I'm surprised that UCLA's department of Germanic would even dare to hedge the comparison in that way given that you'd think that the staff there would know better and that there are already accurate analogies.
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