4 ms·

I've been wondering for some time why some languages 'mark' (eg, verb tenses, declining nouns, adjectives) more/less than others. Over time some mark more and

• WildUtah 16y ago
  Well, Spanish marks subjects of verbs with inflection and requires detailed accounting of objects with pronouns and clitics. In return Spanish gets the opportunity to build a subtle set of emphasis points in sentences. The final position in a Spanish sentence may belong to the subject, an object of any kind, the verb, or a subordinate clause equally easily. Which thing gets that honored position becomes the topic of emphasis for the sentence. Then whichever one comes first (also flexible) gets the second strongest mark. Things that come along in the middle can get much smaller emphasis depending on order. Adjectives and relative pronoun phrases can change emphasis based on order, too. In Latin, there is almost no natural order needed. Nouns specify their function in the sentence with declension and verbs attach to subjects with their conjugations. Latin poetry can hold a soup of words in almost any order. In English and Mandarin order matters. But there is little chance to mark the function of words morphologically. Instead the words stay the same and you rearrange them. That means you can't reorder sentences like you could in Spanish or Latin.