Re: [tied] Re: IE & linguistic complexity

>> 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

Is Modern English more SOV than Old English? to SVO, you mean?

Marc