• Lvxferre@lemmy.mlM
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    1 year ago

    TL;DW: word orders using the subject before the object are considerably more common. (I said TL;DW, but the video is worth watching.)

    I’ve informally noticed that Libras signers more often than not don’t use full sentences, but fragments of. (NB: I’m not a speaker, I’m inducing this based on observation.) That only confirms what he said, as Libras is heavily context-dependent, and that also interferes on word order.

    Regarding word order as a gradient: it’s less like a gradient and more like a bunch of “movements”, like “if X happens do Y”. For example, oversimplifiedly:

    Latin - start with SOV. If the verb is sum (I am), move the verb to before the object (you’ll get SVO). Then move the topic to the front, whatever it might be, and the comment to the end.

    German - start with SOV. If your sentence is an interrogation, move the head verb to the start of the sentence, but keep the rest at the end; you’ll get VSO((V)V). Else, move the head verb to the second position; you’ll get either SVO((V)V) or VSO((V)V), depending on the presence or absence of some element before the subject stealing its “spot”. This is known as V2.

    English - start with SVO. If it’s an interrogation, check the if the verb is part of a small list of verbs that don’t require do-support; otherwise, spawn “do” before the main verb and let it steal its conjugation. Then migrate the head verb to the start, so you’ll get either VSO (are you here?) or VSVO (did you see me?).

    Portuguese - start with SVO. If the sentence has a clitic object, depending on the verb conjugation and the variety you’ll place it somewhere before or after the least conjugated verb. Sometimes even between two verbs that are spelled like one.

    So odds are that word order is dependent on a lot of pragmatic and grammatical factors, and those are dictating where each thing goes. I’ve also noticed that, across the two main word orders, SOV tends to be more common across languages with a full-fledged case mark system (like Latin), while SVO is more common across languages with a defective (like English) or non-existent (Mandarin) case mark system.