Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!sabre!gamma!pyuxp!pyuxe!pyuxf!asg
From: asg@pyuxf.UUCP (alan geller)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: words order in English and Japanese
Summary: German doesn't fit this model
Message-ID: <236@pyuxf.UUCP>
Date: 18 Jan 88 21:40:47 GMT
References: <1671@russell.STANFORD.EDU>
Organization: Bell Communications Research
Lines: 58

In article <1671@russell.STANFORD.EDU>, nakashim@russell.STANFORD.EDU (Hideyuki Nakashima) writes:
> I came up with a theory to explain the difference in word orders
> between English and Japanese.  This is a very naive theory.  Any
> comments are welcome.
> 
> In English, verbs come very early in the sentence.  Second position in
> declarative and the first position in imperative.  In Japanese, verbs
> come at the end of sentences.  In general, in English, head features
> (dominant information) come first while in Japanese they come later.
> Another example is negation marker.  In English it comes very early
> while in Japanese it comes at the end.  You cannot tell if the sentence
> is positive or negative until you hear the very last, in Japanese.
> 
> Now, English (probably I can say Latin) speaking people are basically
> hunters, while Japanese are basically farmers.  Hunting is a real-time
> job while farming is not.
> ...

One problem language here would be German.  While technically German follows
English word order (more or less), in many (most?) German sentences a helper
verb (to be, must be, can be, etc.) appears in the first or second position,
while the 'real' or 'action' verb comes at the end of the sentence, conjugated
as a past tense or a gerund.  In English, the action verb is often moved up
to follow the helper verb directly.  I believe that this is true in many
East European langauges, as well.  For that matter, if I can remember my
smattering of Latin correctly (corrections appreciated), even in Latin 
the word order can vary, depending on the emphasis desired.

Also, historically, Old English often follows the word order of modern German.
The word order change took place (over a period of a few centuries) roughly
at the same time as the Norman Conquest.  By this time, most Englishmen were
farmers; almost none were subsistence hunters.  In fact, the Angles and Saxons
never were subsistence hunters, nor were any of the other Germanic tribes;
they farmed just like everyone else, although they probably fished more than
most Central European tribes (something they have in common with the Japanese).

Unfortunately, I don't have a good alternate theory to explain the word order
of modern English.  I do have some questions/conjectures which might provide
a starting point, though:

	- Do languages whose grammars were frozen earlier tend to have
		later action verbs than those whose grammars were frozen
		more recently?  Note that English grammar is still changing.

	- Do languages with a greater written history tend to have late
		action verbs, as opposed to those with primarily oral
		traditions?  Again, English didn't have a large body of 
		written work until after Chaucer.

	- Is there any correlation between form of government and placement
		of action verbs?  This is pretty far-fetched, but I notice that
		Germany, Japan, and Rome all had 'imperial' forms or government
		(relatively absolute monarchies), while England's monarchy
		never had that level of power.

Alan Geller
Bellcore
...{princeton,rutgers}!pyuxp!pyuxf!asg