Re: [tied] SVO - SOV

From: g-tegle@...
Message: 7074
Date: 2001-04-12

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> SOV was the predominant PIE word-order. Of course there are only
six possible permutations of S, V and O, and the three most common
ones _by far_ are SVO, SOV and VSO (there is a universal preference
for placing the subject before the object). This means, among other
things, that chance agreement of word-order types occurs very often.
>

That is why it is much more interesting to compare the possible word-
orders rather than the most common word order between different
languages. Ofcourse when saying that both English and Scandinavian
have SVO as the most common word order, it doesn't really tell us
that much. Even if the Scandinavian languages have the SVO pattern,
the word order in these languages have more in common with German
system with SOV than English.

Some critics might argue that German only partially make use of the
SOV pattern (mainly in dependent sentences). I'd say that is wrong
since infinite verbals and verbal particles (nearly) always stand
last in the sentence. The infinite verb on the contrary preceeds most
of its complements (sometimes even the subject) in the main sentence
and stand last in dependent sentence. So in my opinion the correct
pattern for German is S(V)OV.

HÃ¥vard