Marc Verhaegen
> Yes, thanks. Mon & Thai are not mutually understandable, are they?
> What about word order? do "trade languages" tend to evolve from SOV
to SVO?
Thanks Marc. An interesting point. Mon and Thai are separate
languages - Thai being Daic and Mon being Austroasiatic. Both are
SOV languages with auxilliaries being added to verbs to modify
tense. This is a feature that they share with Malay. Tagalog, by
comparision is a VSO language. The same is true of Fijian, Samoan,
Tongan and Tahitian, and so may be the ancestral form for
Austronesian (Is anyone on the list an AN specialist?). If trade
languages do evolve to an SOV condition, then it is certainly true of
Malay, Melanesian pidgin and the shift from Old to Modern English
(assuming English to be such a trade anguage).
Regards
John