Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!dayton!jad
From: jad@dayton.UUCP (John A. Deters)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Cultural Impact on Word Ordering in any Language
Message-ID: <3037@dayton.UUCP>
Date: 19 Jan 88 04:04:13 GMT
References: <1671@russell.STANFORD.EDU>
Reply-To: jad@dayton.UUCP (John A. Deters)
Organization: Dayton-Hudson Dept. Store Co.
Lines: 31
In-Reply-To: <142@blic.BLI.COM>

You may be on the right track comparing word ordering
to the agricultural origins of the people.  It may be based more
on the stability (or relative mobility) of the people who speak
it, and the Japanese, being primarily agricultural, have been very
stable, location-wise.  The English (Germanic) peoples, being
originally hunters, were substantially more mobile.  The 
Japanese culture has been in place for many thousands
of years, and they have not left a very small geographic location.
Their language has stabilized.  English, French, and Russian,
on the other hand, have derived from a more mobile people who were
moved about substantially due to wars, invasions, etc.
In English, we all know that the verbs can come almost anywhere.
In French, also, the verb can come between the subject and the object.  
The French language is a Latin-based language somewhat similar to
English, and the culture is roughly the same age.  Modern
Russian (from what I could glean from a friend) also has a
flexible structure allowing the verb to come anyplace in a
sentence, and it too came from a mobile culture.  My friend
also brought up an interesting point from this -- it would
be nice to hear from someone who knows Hebrew, the language of
the "race of wanderers".  It might be an answer in this
mobile language theory, and to find out what the sentence structure
is like in that language would prove interesting.

P.S.  Any racial references are not* to be construed as slurs!

-- 
-john deters                     Dayton Hudson Department Store Company
uucp:  rutgers!dayton!jad        MIS 1060/700 on the Mall/Mpls, MN  55402
ARTHUR:        "A scratch?  Your arm's off!"
BLACK KNIGHT:  "It's only a flesh wound."