2010/5/1 R A Brown <[log in to unmask]>

>
> To get us back to conlanging - it occurs to me that the following should be
> intelligible in Esperanto:
>
> juna beletan amindumas fraulinon viro
> "The young man woos the pretty young_lady"
>
> Two questions:
> 1. Are such words orders ever encountered in Esperanto verse? (I don't
> imagine such things would occur in prose)
>

I doubt it hasn't occurred before; it must have when people try to rhyme, or
fit their verse to a meter. Although I am not very well acquainted with the
corpus of Esperanto verse so I can't point to any actual examples.

I presume simultaneous students of, say, Latin and Esperanto might get
tempted, especially if they are linguistically-inclined, to translate verse
in the former into the latter just for the fun of it. I do. :p


>
> 2. Are there conlangs in which such word orders may and do occur?
>
>
 Classical Arithide permits such a word order thanks to its extensive
inflection system. (Of course IRL the complex inflections were actually
created to make syntactic games possible, but we all do that. ;) )

The prevalent metrical pattern, at least in middle to late Classical
Arithide, was groups of 3 "morae", for want of a better term, which could be
composed of:

- a heavy syllable and a light, ( ¯ ˇ )
- the reverse ( ˇ ¯ ), or
- three lights ( ˇ ˇ ˇ ).

Two groups could be strung together to yield:
- three heavies ( ¯ ¯ ¯ ), or
- two heavies and two lights ( ¯ ¯ ˇ ˇ , ˇ ¯ ¯ ˇ , ˇ ˇ ¯ ¯ )

Of course, as in all languages, the most celebrated poets broke these
guidelines innumerable times.

Eugene