5 ms·
But doesn't using non-standard word order in Slavic languages shift the emphasis?
by apocolyps6 6y ago
But doesn't using non-standard word order in Slavic languages shift the emphasis?
- BerislavLopac 6y agoI'm not familiar with all of them, but for the ones I am that shift is, at worst, very mild. The order is still important in individual phrases: e.g. in Croatian, "dobar dan" (good day, a common greeting) would sound strange if the order is reversed. On the other hand "danas je dobar dan" (today is a good day), "dobar dan je danas" and "dobar dan danas je" are pretty much the same, in the descending order of common usage and "correctness". In all three examples the emphasis would be on the word indicating the point being made: "danas" if it's a good day as opposed to yesterday or another day, "je" if pointing out that it really is a good day, "dobar" (most commonly) in opposition to a bad (or neutral) day, and "dan" in opposition to a night. To be clear, the sentence order is not completely irrelevant: it is commonly used (like in English) to turn a statement into a question (in speech usually with the emphasis shift). In the example above, "is today a good day?" would be "je (li) danas dobar dan?"