--- In cybalist@..., tgpedersen@... wrote:
>
> That's an interesting claim. Would care to elaborate? I thought SVO
> was SVO? Does it come in flavors?
>
From what I have understood, the different patterns VSO, SVO, SOV,
are general patterns. That is, a simple declarative sentence with
only the core grammatical elements subject, verb, object, follows
different word order depending on the language in question.
Nevertheless, even though such simple sentences follow the same
pattern, SVO, in English and Scandinavian, it doesn't mean that this
is the only pattern found in these languages.
For instance, Scandinavian languages change word order more often
than English if the sentence is more complex, and when such changes
in order are applied in Scandinavian, they are done the same way as
in German. Scandinavian and English have the same sentence structure
only in the core sentences with subject, verb and object, after which
coincidently the terms using the symbols S,V, and O are defined. In
any other circumstances, the chances are the Scandinavian word order
are more like German than English. Example:
Declarative sentence:
(G) Du siehst mich.
(E) You see me.
(N) Du ser meg.
Question:
(G) Siehst du mich?
(E) Do you see me?
(N) Ser du meg?
Note that German and Norwegian make questions the same way.
Another variant of the declarative sentence showing how flexible the
word order is in German and Norwegian:
(G) Mich siehst du
(E) *Me see you
(N) Meg ser du
The English sentence is ugrammatical, the others are not.
Agree?
Håvard