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From: rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP (Rick Wojcik)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.lang
Subject: Re: words order in English and Japanese
Message-ID: <3580@bcsaic.UUCP>
Date: 22 Jan 88 17:27:34 GMT
References: <1671@russell.STANFORD.EDU> <236@pyuxf.UUCP>
Reply-To: rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP (Rick Wojcik)
Organization: Boeing Computer Services AI Center, Seattle
Lines: 46
Summary: I don't know whether to laugh or cry over this discussion.

In article <236@pyuxf.UUCP> asg@pyuxf.UUCP (alan geller) writes:
>...
>Also, historically, Old English often follows the word order of modern German.

Indo-European was probably SOV, but verb-last word order in modern
German is a recent development in that language, I believe.  Historically,
German went through a verb-medial stage just like English.  Someone
please correct me if I am wrong about this.

>	- 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.
>
English grammar is still changing, and so are all the others--except
maybe for dead languages.  Give an example of a language with a frozen
grammar.

>	- 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.
>
No.  The language with the longest written record--Chinese--is currently
verb-medial and shows evidence of moving towards verb-last word order.
All other verb-last languages have shorter written histories, and some
have none at all.  The answer is an emphatic *NO*.

>	- Is there any correlation between form of government and placement
>		of action verbs?  This is pretty far-fetched, but I notice that

The answer is once more *NO*.  This kind of unfounded speculation about
natural language structure and environment is normally discussed in the
first few days of an introductory linguistics course.  If you feel that
your reasoning is far-fetched--and Hideyuki Nakashima mentioned that his
was "naive"--why don't you seek formal training?  

The original issue that triggered this debate--whether or not word order
could in principle be explained in terms of culture--has been
convincingly answered in the negative.  Those who wish to continue
supporting such a notion should at least try to respond to arguments
against their position.  This whole debate is like one of those birthday
candles that keeps reigniting no matter how many times it is blown out.
-- 

===========
Rick Wojcik   rwojcik@boeing.com