Re: Word order types

[JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON <mpearson@UCLA.EDU>]

On Wed, 3 Dec 1997, Nik wrote:

> JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON wrote:
>
> > Then there's German and Dutch, Mandarin, and other 'mixed' cases,
> > which
> > seem to combine features of both OV and VO types.
>
> In the Germanic languages, and many others that violate some of the
> rules (I suppose Persian probably falls in this catagory) are in the
> process of changing.  Their is evidence that Proto-Germanic was SOV.

I've heard this kind of historical explanation before, and I'm not sure
I'm convinced by it.  The picture it paints is of two word order 'proto-
types', OV and VO, with actual languages moving back and forth along
the continuum between them.  I'm not sure I really believe this story.
As far as I can tell, German shows no signs of becoming more VO than it
is already.  And anyway, as I see it, 'explaining' the existence of
mixed word order languages by appealing to historical change just begs
the question, since our understanding of how and why languages change
is pretty minimal.

What the existence of mixed languages suggests to me is that Greenberg's
typology represents an oversimplification which needs to be refined.
Lots of linguists have suggested such refinements, with (IMHO) enlightening
results.  I'm hoping to continue that line of research in my dissertation,
in fact.

Matt.