Re: The structure of nostratic

--- Gerry Reinhart-Waller <waluk@...> wrote:

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I truly hate to offer my opinion, but I will,
nevertheless. 
 
As far as I know, most languages allow a shift
between SVO, OVS, VOS etc. 
This is usually called "voice". 
Thus, Bill hits the ball, The ball is hit by
Bill, Hitting the ball by Bill 
is..... and so forth. 
 
One cannot equate sentence formation with a particular
archaic language. 
 
Gerry 
 

Well

It is true that most languages allowes such shifts,
but the kind of shifts allowed differs between a
vso-language and svo-language. The shift vso/sov is
nearly never found in voice changes.

The difference between a typcal VSO-language and
SOV-language also goes much deeper. Here are some
typical properties:

VSO
Prepositions
Attributes placed after
Sentences strung together with conjunctions

SOV
Case endings/postpositions
Attributes placed before
Sentences subordinated using partisipial constructions
with case endings

Actually a typcal VSO-language as for example Arabic
or Hebrew is based upon a totally different prinsiple
of ordering elements than a typical SOV-language, as
for example Turkish or Japanese.

Therefore comparison of grammatical structure, I
think, should be as important as comparing phonems and
word stems.

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