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Changes in word order=different meaning | ||
Tags: Syntax | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 9 of 13 11 March 2013 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
Finnish is similar to Russian in this regard. Kynä on pöydällä. - The pen is on the table. Pöydällä on kynä. - There is a pen on the table. (incidentally this flexibility in word order is a way for a language to express definiteness without articles or a "dummy adverb" as in English "there"). Here are a couple other examples of different word order yielding distinct senses or emphasis (if not changing meaning to the point of yielding sentences whose meanings are unrelated). Hungarian: Eszel kenyeret? - Are you eating (some) bread? (i.e. rather than doing sg else) Kenyeret eszel? - Is it (some) bread that you're eating? (i.e. rather than some other food) Slovak: Čítam knihu. - I'm reading a/the book. Knihu čítam. - A/the book is read/being read by me. Vihelik showed here how a few adpositions in Estonian bear different meanings depending on whether they're used as prepositions or postpositions. Depending on your point of view, the switch between pre- and postposition could be interpreted as an example of different syntax yielding different meaning (not just different emphasis).
Research in word order keeps a lot of linguists and grad students employed and busy respectively. I found quite a few .pdfs on the subject in various languages by searching Google. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 10 of 13 11 March 2013 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Russian:
Мы говорили три часа. - We talked for (exactly) three hours. Мы говорили часа три. - We talked for about three hours. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 11 of 13 11 March 2013 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Brazilian Portuguese:
Quem conhece você? (Who knows you?) [the phrase was used by Google' s Orkut] Quem você conhece? (Whom do you know?) Speakers of Spanish have problems with these two, since in Spanish, the word order in questions is free. Not so in Brazilian Portuguese, the inversion is not possible with transitive verbs, it changes the meaning: Quem ama você? (Who loves you?) Quem você ama? (Whom do you love?) (You can insert QUE or É QUE in questions but it's not obligatory) Edited by Medulin on 11 March 2013 at 6:42pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| rochejagu Diglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 4898 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: Greek | Message 12 of 13 11 March 2013 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A dutch one. Hij heeft haar op zijn borst = he has hair on his chest
or Hij heeft haar op zijn borst = he has her on his chest. depends how you stress the word haar 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 13 of 13 11 March 2013 at 10:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
This doesn't seem to be what the thread's about. The initiator of the thread is looking for examples where changing the word order while leaving the constituents of the sentence or phrase as they are yields different meaning. An example in English would be: "The boy sees the girl." "The girl sees the boy." 1 person has voted this message useful |
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