On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 3:17 PM, Logan Kearsley <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> On 22 February 2018 at 15:55, Sylvia Sotomayor <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > I have a question regarding word order and OV languages.
> >
> > The latest draft of the new language is mostly verb-final. The basic word
> > order is SOV. The structure of the verb phrase itself is
> Subject-Proclitic
> > - Verb - Inflection. The inflection part codes tense, evidentiality,
> person
> > of subject and person of object. While the subject proclitic marks person
> > and number, the inflection only marks person. Also, in some cases the
> forms
> > of the inflections have fallen together, so that without a subject
> > proclitic you have no idea if the inflection -ñe means non-past, second
> > person subject, no object OR recent past, direct evidentiality, first
> > person subject, no object OR recent past, direct evidentiality, third
> > person subject with first person object. Since subject and to a certain
> > extent object are marked in the verb phrase itself, the actual noun
> phrases
> > for S and O do not have to be expressed.
>
> Sounds rather similar to Valaklwuuxa, in terms of dividing up the
> responsibility for agreement between a proclitic and suffixed
> inflections.
>
> So, does the proclitic stick around even when there is an explicit
> subject phrase?
>
> Yes, it does. But then the non-volitional subject proclitics don't
explicitly mark number either, so that you need to say:
keye kecameye (I sense) vs kenna kecameye (we-exclusive sense).


> > Within a typical noun phrase, the word order goes: (adjective) noun
> > (generic noun) (postposition). I also have demonstratives. My preference
> is
> > to put the demonstrative first: dem adj noun generic. I suspect this is
> not
> > the usual OV language word order. But I like it. Especially when I have
> > something like demonstrative relative-clause relative-pronoun noun
> > generic-noun resumptive-demonstrative COPULA noun.
> >
> > So, the question: how unnatural is it to have a demonstrative at the
> > beginning of a noun phrase in an OV language?
>
> I did not precisely count up exactly how many examples of each
> combination there were, but just eyeballing the WALS data it looks
> like the incidence of Noun-Demonstrative vs. Demonstrative-Noun order
> is fairly evenly split for OV languages.
>
> Now, that's not necessarily the same thing as coming at the beginning
> of the whole phrase, prior to any other modifiers, but it ought to be
> a reasonable proxy. The structure feels fine to me, so I'd say you're
> good to go.
>
> -l.
>

Thanks!

--
Sylvia Sotomayor

The sooner I fall behind the more time I have to catch up.