Talk:Word order

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The allocation of German to the languages with SOV word-order overlooks the fact that the most basic word-order in German in "stand alone", that is, main clauses making statements is SVO. The proviso that German is subject to the V-2 rule merely highlights this. The fundamental SVO word order is particularly clear in those instances where all the determiners are omitted, as in newspaper headlines, where readers have to rely on word order (and context) to indentify the subject and object, for example: "Mann biß Hund!" (German only uses SOV word-order in suborinate clauses) - JohnC 03:53 29 Jul 2005 (UTC)

It is often unsatisfactory to refer to a language as a "SOV" language if it merely used that word order in some contexts. I endorse the comments made by JohnC and would add that in the case of German (and Dutch) it's standard practice, with compound verbs, to treat the auxiliary as "the verb". The whole logic V-2 is based on this. For example, in a sentence like "Gestern haben wir Ilse besucht" the V-2 position or "slot" is occupied by "haben" and there is no question of the verb following the object as SOV implies. Norvo (01:30 UTC, 31 Jul 2005)

The verb in Gestern haben wir Ilse besucht is besuchen. It's true that the part of the verb complex that's inflected for person and number occupies V2 position in main clauses in German and Dutch, but that doesn't change the fact that the basic word order is SOV. The dominant theory in syntax for German/Dutch word order is that the person/number inflection is moved from final position to second position in main clauses, not that the infinitive or participle is moved to final position. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 22:24, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Syntax 2 Why? 3 Factual question on markedness 4 Free word order

[edit] Syntax

How exactly does "word order" differ from "syntax" and isn't the former the more appropraite term? Would a merger be appropriate?

Peter ^Isotalo 07:17, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why?

What was the motive behind agent=>patient? [anon]

It was subject => agent. The article explained this before you deleted the explanation. Not all languages have subjects (especially in the case of the rarer orders where the object occurs before the agent), and of those that do, the S of intransitive verbs often has a different word order than the A of transitive verbs, so it's a good idea to keep them distinct. kwami 02:27, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The agent is an unfamiliar term to common people,

Thus the link.

and is incompatible with the object.

Incompatible how?

it must be reverted to subject.Lehi 04:09, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

"Must"? Are you suggesting we should be inaccurate in order to avoid a word that some people are unfamiliar with? kwami 05:40, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Agent must only be used in conjunction with patient. Any other use of it is incorrect, and must be reverted. It is not an innacuracy, it is a correction. Thousands of books use Subject without being innacurate.Lehi 01:59, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

You have a remarkable insight into how the world 'must' be. Please correct the many linguistic works out there which use 'agent' with 'object'.

If you wish to change 'object' to 'patient', be my guest. That term is more compatible, as you suggest. Meanwhile please stop adding erroneous material to the article. Are you doing this on purpose? 'Subject' is incorrect, as the article quite clearly explains. kwami 05:48, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

As soon as you correct the papers that use subject. It is not incorrect, and changing the title of an article to suit just a few languages is.Lehi 06:36, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "correct the ones that use subject". Also, this typology is not restricted to nominative-accusative languages, as you suggest on your talk page. kwami 07:20, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I was refering to your second paragraph in your third entry

I still don't understand what you mean. kwami 10:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Read againLehi 06:23, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I assume from that response that your demand is of no importance to you, so I will disregard it. kwami 06:36, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

He is refering to your request that he "Please correct the many linguistic works out there which use 'agent' with 'object'." He wants you to correct all papers that use "subject verb object" rather than "agent verb object." Linguofreak 14:56, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

The change of "subject" to "agent" seems remarkably like original research to me, though since the article doesn't have any references either way it's hard to be sure. It is certainly true that SVO/VSO/SOV etc. are much better known and more widely used terms in English. I would strongly support changing all the "agent"s back to "subject" and then adding a sentence explaining that in some languages "agent" would be more appropriate than "subject" (assuming sources are provided to back up that claim). In languages like English, though, it is certainly the subject, not the agent, that comes before the verb in passive sentences like The ball was kicked by John. Angr (talk • contribs) 08:04, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

As far as English is concerned, I think calling it SVO is appropriate; on the other hand for Hindi it is really difficult to come up with a satisfactory definition of "Subject". In case of Hindi the PaNinian concepts of अभिहित and कर्ता seem more appropriate. User:Vineet Chaitanya

A quick google search turns up over 120,000 sites that use the term "Subject verb object" vs. 144 that use "Agent verb object." Of course, popularity is not neccesarily a measure of correctness, but the fact that references to SVO outnumber those to AVO 1000 to 1 does bear consideration. I'd use SVO, and say something to the effect of "in ergative-absolutive languages the terms "Agent" and "Patient" are used rather than "subject" and "object." (EDIT: Since Ergative-absolutive languages group the patient and the arguement of intransitive verbs under one case, I'm actually not sure that we should use "patient" for "object." How do you do a strikethrough?)

When a nominative-accusative language is being described, and when the language the description is written in is also nominative-accusative, it is much, much less confusing and more accurate to use the terms "subject" and "object." If you're dealing with an ergative-absolutive language, it's much better to use the terms "Agent" and "Patient."

I'll make the edit I described above to try and find some middle ground we can all agree on. However, the arguement is fairly pointless, so if it gets reverted, I'll let it go, and I suggest everyone else do so to. Linguofreak 14:56, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've made the edit to this page. If people are happy with it sombody else can make the appropriate changes to the pages on the individual word orders. I don't have enough experience with Wikipedia to rename the articles (for example, I couldn't rename "Agent Verb Object" to Subject Verb Object because the redirect page from SVO to AVO seems to be using the name "Subject Verb Object" and blocking the move back, and I didn't want to change the text without changing the name). If people aren't happy, then they can revert this page and I won't do anything about it. Linguofreak 15:34, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Moving a page to a name where there's already a redirect isn't a matter of experience, it's a matter of being an admin (because it involves page deletion). I'll move the pages back once there's been a little bit more discussion here. Angr (talk • contribs) 17:26, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, 'subject' is better for English (which is why SVO is much more common than AVO), but 'agent' has nothing to do with ergativity, as the article now implies, and when discussing basic word-order typology we don't need to worry about passives or antipassives. Also, several of the example languages don't have subjects, so the description with S instead of A in the rest of the article is simply wrong. 66.27.205.12 19:33, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

It's true "agent" has nothing to do with ergativity, so I've removed that sentence. But I've never heard of a language that didn't have subjects! Certain constructions in some languages may not have overt subjects, but is there such a thing as a language that has no subjects at all? I'm completely baffled by this edit summary where you say "the word 'subject' does not apply to ergative languages". Of course it does! Ergative languages have subjects same as accusative languages; it's just case marking that works differently. Verbs in ergative languages agree with their subjects, regardless of whether the subject is in the ergative or the absolutive. At least I've never heard of an ergative language with verb agreement along the lines of "The man arrives" (intransitive verb agrees with subject) vs. "The man see the boys" (transitive verb agrees with object). Angr (talk • contribs) 20:15, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

In ergative languages the ergative case corresponds to the agent, just as the nominative case corresponds to the subject in nom-acc languages, so I thought that distinguishing SVO word order for nom-acc languages from AVO for erg-abs would clear things up. Was I overlooking anything? Linguofreak 21:39, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

But in SVO, S is A, so that's rather confusing. Also, when people use A, they restrict S to intransitive verbs (and sometimes replace O with P).

I made a mistake in using the term 'agent'. That is, of course, where the A comes from. But 'A' doesn't have the semantic connotations of the term 'agent' which you're objecting to. You're quite right to do so. Instead we should use A, S, and O as fundamental terms rather than as abbreviations. kwami 23:50, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

In ergative languages, the ergative case is used for the subject of a transitive verb (which in active sentences will also be the agent), while the absolutive case is used for the subject of an intransitive verb (which will also often be the agent, depending on the semantics of the verb in question). The word order depends on the syntactic subject of the sentence, regardless of whether or not this is also the semantic agent, and regardless of whether the language is ergative or accusative. The ergative language/accusative language distinction is AFAICT a complete red herring to the SVO/SOV/VSO... issue. Angr (talk • contribs) 22:44, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Not quite. The ergative case is used for what would be the subject of a transitive verb in an accusative language, while the absolutive case is used for what would be the subject of an intransitive verb in an accusative language. But the term 'subject' is meaningless in ergative languages themselves. Neither case corresponds to topicality or other aspects of a subject, so there's no semantic, syntactic, or discourse equivalence, and of course there's no morphological equivalence. It's similarly meaningless in Philippine-type languages, which is why in the 1960s there was so much debate as to what the "true" subject was in these languages. There are even nom-acc langs which do not have subjects, like the nominative-marked Cushitic languages. Even in some languages with subjects, it's unhelpful to use the same term for the A of transitives and the S of intransitives, because they don't follow the same typology. In Russian, A precedes verbs, but S does not. kwami 23:50, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

The biggest problem with ergative languages is that they generally have some nom-acc features (and often vice versa). Take the example of Russian, which from your description seems to be a nom-acc language with word order consistent with an ergative language.

But the basic problem is that whether it is best to use "SVO" or "AVO" depends on the language. In English the subject is fronted, but the agent can be pushed to the end of the sentence (or even ommitted) in a passive construction. In Russian the agent is always fronted, but the subject is kicked to the end when it isn't the agent. There may well even be languages where neither subject nor agent is consistently before the verb. Linguofreak 02:18, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, yeah: VSO languages. Except that actually there is no such thing as a VSO language. The Celtic languages, for example, are usually called VSO, but in fact they're InflSVO. Kwami seems to be using a very different definition of "subject" from what I can find in all the linguistics I can find, which invariably refer to ergative languages as having subjects. To take the Basque examples from Ergative-absolutive language, every description I can find calls gizona the subject of Gizona etorri da and gizonak the subject of Gizonak mutila ikusi du. The fact that they're in different cases doesn't mean they're not both subjects. As I mentioned above, to the best of my knowledge, ergative languages still have subject/verb agreement regardless of whether the subject is in the absolutive or the ergative. Angr (talk • contribs) 07:51, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

First of all, my mistake in calling A the 'agent'. That was very sloppy of me. In word-order typology, A is the more active argument of a transitive verb, whereas S is the only argument of an intransitive. This is standard typological nomenclature. An English active clause is AVO (or AVP if you prefer; it makes no difference), whereas an English passive clause is SV. (Passives are intransitive by definition, and so play no part in the AVO order.)

AFAIK, verbs in erg langs agree with the absolutive, which is why the absolutive case is often called the 'subject'. Actually, in all cases I can think of, the verbs agree with both arguments, but it's the O and S which take the same agreement markers. kwami 08:39, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Factual question on markedness

That word order is unmarked. That is, it contains no extra information to the listener.

That's a bit confusing. In languages with looser constraints on word order, it's my understanding that there are morphemes that indicate grammatical case, to distinguish subjects vs. objects, etc. In that sense, these languages are very much "marked". In languages without case-marking morphemes, word order does carry information. Is this what this passage is talking about, or is it trying to make a different point of some kind? -- Beland 17:38, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Free word order

Also, could someone clarify what "free word order" means? I know there are idiomatic conventions about Russian word order, though alternate orders are not necessarily considered ungrammatical. Do languages with "free word order" have no constraints on order other than convention? How does one explain that in light of X-bar theory? Do different orders have different semantic meanings or the same, and the differences are a matter of emphasis? -- Beland 17:38, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Most common order in Russian is SVO, like "мама мыла раму", "mom washed the frame". But all of the following sentences are grammatically correct and mean the same:

• Мама мыла раму.
• Мама раму мыла.
• Раму мама мыла.
• Раму мыла мама.
• Мыла мама раму.
• Мыла раму мама.

SVO violation may be used for emphasis, in composite sentences, and to mark continuous action (VSO and VOS). -- Abolen 15:14, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Still, that's basically topicalisation. Under Transformational grammar it would be ascribed to movement, and the language would be considered underlyingly SVO. If there was an absolutely free-word-order language, there would still be other indications as to its underlying X-bar structure. BovineBeast 18:09, 4 February 2007 (UTC)