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> I'd argue that word order is just as relevant (and indeed constrained by meaning) in Hungarian or Finnish as it is in, say, English, though the details of how
by bradrn 5y ago
> I'd argue that word order is just as relevant (and indeed constrained by meaning) in Hungarian or Finnish as it is in, say, English, though the details of how each language's syntax works are very different.
I agree; GP didn’t choose the best examples for this. But there are languages like Yimas, Tiwi and Dyirbal for which word order truly is insignificant, so the point still stands.
- Tainnor 5y agoLatin would be an example that more people might be familiar with. There's a difference between "free ordering of constituent phrases", where you may rearrange subject noun phrases, object noun phrases, adverbial phrases and the verb into any order depending on emphasis etc., and completely free word order - like in the languages you mentioned - where "the little man walked through the big door" could end up as "man door through walked big little the the" or something like that, completely breaking apart what we'd consider "constituent phrases" in a language like English, where "the little man" etc. always move together in a sentence.
- bradrn 5y agoYou’re completely right — indeed, Latin would have been a much better example than the ones I chose. (But I had been reading about Yimas a few hours before posting and it was on my mind.) > There's a difference between "free ordering of constituent phrases", where you may rearrange subject noun phrases, object noun phrases, adverbial phrases and the verb into any order depending on emphasis etc., and completely free word order - like in the languages you mentioned - where "the little man walked through the big door" could end up as "man door through walked big little the the" or something like that, completely breaking apart what we'd consider "constituent phrases" in a language like English, where "the little man" etc. always move together in a sentence. But how common is it to have the former without the latter? Most languages I read about have either both or neither.
- Tainnor 5y ago> But how common is it to have the former without the latter? Most languages I read about have either both or neither. Many language seem to have at least a somewhat flexible ordering of constituents. It may often depend on emphasis, information structure, etc. German for example can be quite flexible in that regard, and the effects this has on information structure are rather subtle (however, the verb always has to go in the second position, so it's not totally free). There are probably languages where it's even more free, but I don't have any examples off the top of my head. By contrast, there are languages where word order is very rigid (even in English, while you can rearrange constituents up to a point, it's not nearly as common as in German, and I would argue that it can often sound slightly archaic)
- bradrn 5y ago> in English, while you can rearrange constituents up to a point … I would argue that it can often sound slightly archaic This I don’t agree with.† The rest of your post, however, I agree with entirely, and how I forgot the examples you mention I’m not entirely sure. [† see what I did there?]
- Tainnor 5y agoarchaic might have been a bad choice of words, although it probably depends on the exact sentence. I do think it sounds more formal, though, I think I'd be less likely to hear your first sentence in everyday conversation. Then again, I'm not a native speaker of English.
- bradrn 5y agoMy native-speaker intuition tells me the opposite — I’m probably more likely to use such constructions in colloquial speech than in formal written text. My second sentence does seem more formal to me though.