I am very glad to have a person with a bright mind criticising me and
my ideas. You were much more effective in getting the idea behind
your message through to me than what I had thought. Take it as a
compliment.
In the last post my intention was not prove that you were wrong, I
wanted to give a picture of how I think about word order in German. I
should have just comented on your views, then I wouldn't have made
such mistakes, but I don't regret it; this is much more exciting.
>The placing of the infinitive or participle at the end of the
sentence has nothing to do with its being a verb form.
This is were I thought we disagreed, I took you too litteraly. I
understood your view this way, that the form of the verbal hasn't any
effect on where in the sentence it should be placed. But then you
said:
>The one invariable rule is main verb second.
It seems we agreed after all, that the position of the verbal depends
on wether it is finite or infinite (However I do believe we disagree
on the use the term main verb; in my opinion the main verb is not
equivalent with the finite verb; this might be due to different use
of terminology in English and Norwegian I guess). But you also
managed to find holes in my theory as well with these examples:
>How would you cope with the perfectly good German sentences:
>Gegessen habe ich schon.
>Schlafen will ich jetzt, lesen nicht.
These sentences have infinite verbal taking functioning as a topic.
By this you proved that my theory of a V2 position in the pattern
T V1 (S) O V2
was wrong; the position of infinite verbals in a simple declarative
sentence is not fixed, like the position of finite verbals is. But is
this true? Is there a invariable rule that the finite verb must come
second? I don't think so. What about these sentences?
So was gelesen, habe ich nicht.
Ein Buch schreiben, will ich nicht.
They are much alike your own, only there is an object. Remember we
are talking about defining a pattern of word order of sentences with
a subject, a verb and, don't forget, an object. As can be seen, these
are examples of a finite verb standing in third position. And what do
my sentences prove? That my rule that the infinite verb be last in
the sentence isn't anything less acceptable than the rule that the
finite verb be second.
You said something more that I find interesting:
>For example, all simple declarative sentences will break your rule -
>whereas my suggestion of SVO is maintained invariably in all
>declarative sentences of whatever complexity, without exception.
You have given me examples of a infinite verb standing as a topic.
Here is a challenge to you: Can you give me an example of a
grammatical sentence where a verbal particle stands as a topic?
Such as
*An habe ich ihn gerufen.
or
*An rufe ich ihn.
I would rather place them last in the sentence.
Håvard