From: clayton stirling bartholomew (c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Thu Apr 27 2000 - 02:44:44 EDT
on 04/26/00 8:14 PM, Wayne Leman wrote:
> it is entirely possible that we
> do not need to establish any default word order for some languages.
> Linguists have been working with this idea for a number of years; the
> technical term some formalist linguists use for such languages is that they
> are "non-configurational". Cheyenne, the language we work with, is likely
> one of these. Many Philippine languages are also. That does not mean that
> constituent order is unimportant for non-configurational languages but that
> constituent order does not have anything to do with syntactic roles
> (subject, direct object, direct object, locatives, etc.) or semantic roles
> (e.g. actor, patient, etc.). Instead, such languages typically use
> constituent order (or, often, a degree of word order) to mark pragmatic
> relations, typically focus, emphasis, contrast.
Hi Wayne,
Given your definition of a "non-configurational" language I would think that
Hellenistic Greek would qualify. When I talk about a base or default word
order, I am talking about a pattern which is "unmarked" against which we can
see the "marked" word order. If we are going to talk about a fronted
substantive in the nominative case as having pragmatic marking then we are
assuming that nominative substantives before the main verb are not the
normal way of doing things. If they were the normal way of doing things then
there would be no "marking" of any kind, pragmatic or other wise.
If SVO is an "unmarked" word order in Hellenistic Greek then how can we talk
about the S, in the SVO as a pragmatically marked constituent? On the other
hand if VSO is an "unmarked" word order in Hellenistic Greek then we have
grounds for seeing the S, in an SVO pattern as a pragmatically marked
constituent.
Lets assume that we have a means of identifying a pragmatically marked
constituent independent of word order. Lets also assume that a certain
pragmatic slot is always clause initial, and we will call the constituent in
this slot P. If we can find a pattern PSVO but never the pattern PVSO then
we can make a case that we have a SVO language. However, if we find a
pattern PVSO but never PSVO then we can make a case that we have a VSO
language.
The problem is that identifying a pragmatically marked constituent in
Hellenistic Greek independent of constituent order isn't easy since
Hellenistic Greek is not inflected for pragmatic function. So we have an
ambiguous situation where the pattern SVO may be pragmatically marked by
fronting of S or it may not be pragmatically marked if SVO is unmarked word
order.
All this can be stated simply. You cannot have a marked pattern if their is
no unmarked pattern to contrast it with. So the whole notion of a fronted
constituent rests on the notion of an unmarked constituent order.
Perhaps the problem here is that I am revolting against one of the
underlying ideas of "pragmatics." This is entirely possible since I am not
well read in pragmatics. The idea that a clause initial constituent is
pragmatically marked in all languages seems a bit strange to me. If we
accept this idea then one could say that the S, in the SVO pattern is
pragmatically marked even without knowing what the unmarked constituent
order is for the language in question. I tend to travel in the world of
binary oppositions where the idea of a marked form with no corresponding
unmarked form is considered an untenable idea.
Enough, it is late.
Thanks for your help.
Clay
--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062
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