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Is SVO the most natural word order?

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LanguagePhysics
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 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;

Quote:
It is the second most common order found in the world, after SOV, and together, they account for more than 75% of the world's languages.[3] It is also the most common order developed in Creole languages, suggesting that it may be somehow more initially 'obvious' to human psychology.


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

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tarvos
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 Message 2 of 21
05 September 2013 at 1:38pm | IP Logged 
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

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SamD
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 Message 3 of 21
05 September 2013 at 9:26pm | IP Logged 
It's natural to those of us who speak English.
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jeff_lindqvist
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 Message 4 of 21
05 September 2013 at 10:38pm | IP Logged 
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.)
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1e4e6
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 Message 5 of 21
06 September 2013 at 2:53am | IP Logged 
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

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viedums
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 Message 6 of 21
06 September 2013 at 4:34am | IP Logged 
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

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tarvos
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 Message 7 of 21
06 September 2013 at 9:46am | IP Logged 
1e4e6 wrote:
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.


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

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Josquin
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 Message 8 of 21
06 September 2013 at 11:32am | IP Logged 
1e4e6 wrote:
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

It's the same in German, although some details in word order are different from Dutch.


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