Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Volume I: Clause Structure, Second edition
Other typological characteristics correlating with the order
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Lgg Typology, Synt Description v. I - Clause structure
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Other typological characteristics correlating with the order of object and verb The correlations with the order of object and verb discussed in sections 1, 5 and 6 above all involve pairs of elements where one order is more common than the other order in OV languages as compared with VO languages. In this section, we discuss a number of typological characteristics that do not involve the order of two elements but that do appear to correlate with the order of object and verb. First, however, we should mention two such characteristics that we discussed briefly above. One of these is that internally headed relative clauses rarely occur outside of OV languages. The other is that articles are apparently used more often in VO languages than they are in OV languages. 8.1 Position of interrogative expressions in content questions In section 5.5 above, we discussed the position of question particles, words signalling polar questions. These need to be distinguished from interrogative words or expressions that occur in content (or ‘wh’) questions. The examples in (118) from Otomi illustrate a question particle in a polar question and an interrogative expression in a content question, respectively. Word order 109 (118) a. ha mˇa gix ə ˇ n´u ra boxa ´ q going.to you.will.take.it that the money ‘Are you going to take the money?’ b. t´e g´ıhon´ı wa what you.seek.it here ‘What are you looking for here?’ We saw in section 5.5 that question particles can occur in various positions, with initial position correlating with verb-initial languages and final position correlating with OV languages. The position of interrogative expressions in content questions also correlates with the order of object and verb: in verb-initial languages, such expressions most commonly occur at the beginning of sentences (and thus the verb is not initial in such sentences), while in OV languages, they tend most often to occur in situ, the same position in which a corresponding noninterrogative expression would occur. The example in (118b) from Otomi illustrates this initial position in a verb-initial language. The example in (119) from Slave illustrates in situ position in an SOV language: the interrogative expression is functioning as object and thus occurs after the subject and before the verb, where objects normally occur in Slave. (119) David ʔ ay´ıi ehtsi David what 3.make ‘what did David make?’ It should be stressed that this correlation is not as strong as some of those we have discussed and there are many exceptions. Fijian, which we have used to exemplify many characteristics typical of verb-initial languages, is exceptional in this respect. In (120), the interrogative occurs in subject position, in VOS order. (120) e sabici i’o o cei 3sg hit 2sg.obj art who ‘who hit you? Unlike most of the word order characteristics we have discussed, in which SVO languages pattern like verb-initial languages, both types of content ques- tions are common among SVO languages. English is an example of an SVO language in which the interrogative expression occurs at the beginning of the sentence. Hmong Njua is an example of an SVO language in which the inter- rogative expression occurs in situ, as in (121). (121) nwg moog ghov twg 3sg go where ‘where is he going to?’ 110 Matthew S. Dryer Note that the interrogative expression is often an entire phrase, and in lan- guages in which the interrogative expression occurs in initial position, the inter- rogative word may occur later in the phrase, so that the interrogative word itself is not initial, although the phrase is. For example, in (122) from Songhai, a Nilo- Saharan language spoken in west Africa (Prost (1956)), the interrogative phrase in initial position is koyra foyan ga ‘in which villages’, literally ‘villages which in’, in which the interrogative word foyan ‘which’ follows the noun (the gen- eral position for most noun modifiers in Songhai) and the entire postpositional phrase occurs in initial position. (122) koyra fo-yan ga n ga bisa village which-pl in 2sg incomp pass ‘by which villages did you pass?’ 8.2 Affix position Although there are many differences among affixes of different sorts, there is overall a tendency for suffixes to be associated with OV languages, prefixes with VO languages. This is a unidirectional correlation, however, in that three of the four types are common, suffixes in OV languages, suffixes in VO languages, and prefixes in VO languages. In other words, we can say that OV languages more commonly have suffixes, but we cannot say that VO languages more commonly have prefixes. However, if a language is exclusively suffixing, if all affixes in the language are suffixes, the language is more likely to be OV. This correlation is not a strong one, and prefixes in OV languages are not at all rare. 8.3 The use of case in distinguishing transitive arguments Languages employ a variety of means for distinguishing the two arguments in a transitive clause. One means is to mark one or both of them with a case affix or adposition. There appears to be a weak correlation by which OV languages employ such case markers more often than VO languages, more specifically one can say that they are most common in OV languages, next most common in verb-initial languages, and least common in SVO languages. Download 1.59 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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