Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Volume I: Clause Structure, Second edition
Word order characteristics that do not correlate with
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Lgg Typology, Synt Description v. I - Clause structure
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Word order characteristics that do not correlate with the order of object and verb There are a number of word order characteristics that do not correlate cross- linguistically with the order of verb and object, where both orders are common in both OV and VO languages, or at least where there is no difference between OV and VO languages with respect to the frequency of the two orders of these other pairs of elements. The existence of such word order characteristics has often been overlooked in the literature. We discuss six such pairs of elements in this section. 7.1 Adjective and noun 7.1.1 The absence of a correlation with the order of object and verb It is often mistakenly thought that the order of adjective and noun correlates with the order of object and verb, but it is now known that this is not the case (see Dryer (1988, 1992)). It is often thought that OV languages tend to be AdjN and that VO languages tend to be NAdj, but it turns out in fact that this is not so, that NAdj is somewhat more common than AdjN among both OV and VO languages. Part of the source of this problem is that the languages in the sample used by Greenberg (1963) suggested that verb-initial languages tend to be NAdj, but in fact this turns out to be an accidental property of the six verb- initial languages in his sample, and AdjN order is as common in verb-initial languages as it is in SVO and OV languages. Another source of the mistaken impression many linguists had about AdjN order in OV languages is that among the OV languages of Europe and Asia, AdjN order is much more common than NAdj order. This turns out, however, to be an idiosyncracy of Eurasia: outside of Eurasia, NAdj is clearly more common than AdjN among OV languages. The examples in (98) illustrate OV&AdjN and OV&NAdj order in Lezgian and Slave respectively. (98) a. i g¨uzel c¨ukw-er b. tli nech´a this beautiful flower-pl dog big Adj N N Adj ‘these beautiful flowers’ ‘big dog’ Turning to verb-initial languages, the examples in (99) illustrate NAdj order in Fijian and Lealao Chinantec. 102 Matthew S. Dryer (99) a. a ’olii loa b. m¨ı VH -ku¨ı: M tia: M art dog black clsfr -corn white N Adj N Adj ‘black dog’ ‘white corn’ Rukai, spoken in Taiwan (P. Li (1973)), is like Fijian in being a verb-initial Austronesian language, but differs in being AdjN; (100a) illustrates the verb- initial order, while (100b) illustrates the AdjN order. (100) a. wau ŋ ul sa acilay kay marud.a ŋ drank indef.acc water this.nom old.man V O S ‘this old man drank water’ b. kayvay mad.aw daan this big house Adj N ‘this big house’ Mezquital Otomi, an Oto-Manguean language spoken in Mexico (Hess (1968)), is a second example of a verb-initial language with AdjN order; (101a) illustrates the verb-initial order, while (101b) illustrates the AdjN order. (101) a. pˇe ʔ ca ʔ na ra ngˇu n´u ʔ a ra rˇıko has one art house that art rich.man V O S ‘that rich man has a house’ b. ra z´ı zu ʔ w ´ e art little animal Adj N ‘the little animal’ 7.1.2 Identifying adjectives In characterizing the order of noun and adjec- tive in a language, it is important to understand that what is at issue is the order of a noun and an adjective that is Download 1.59 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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