Friday, November 14, 2014

Ćwarmin, Bryatesle and Dairwueh: Some Basic Word Order Typology

Ćwarmin is an SOV language, although some flexibility is present. It does follow some tendencies for such languages:

  • postpositions
  • (Det) (Num) (Adj) Nom, 
  • Gen N - although like in most of my conlangs, Gen can be extracted in several ways
  • wh- in situ
  • auxiliaries follow infinitives
  • a tendency towards time-manner-place order in adverbs

Ćwarmin has "historically" developed from an intermediate SVO stage that developed out of a previous SOV stage, so there are a handful of SVO-like features clinging on, although it never thoroughly acquired full SVO compliance. Relative clauses can precede or follow the noun, although there's a more restricted set of ways in which they can be formed before the noun.

Bryatesle too is basically SOV, with the same basic word order tendencies:

  • postpositions
  • (Det) (Num) (Adj) Nom
  • Gen N, although again, the gen can be extracted in several ways
  • wh- in situ
  • auxiliaries follow infinitives
  • a tendency towards time-manner-place order in adverbs
Bryatesle has no traces from any non-SOV systems. Both Ćwarmin and Bryatesle permit OSV and the verb can be fronted as well. SVO and OVS are very uncommon in both, although an extra subject pronoun can appear in Bryatesle after the verb for emphasis. 

Dairwueh, on the other hand, is SVO. It has the following properties:
  • prepositions
  • Nom (Num) (Det) (Adj) 
  • N Gen
  • prevalent wh-movement

Both Dairwueh and Ćwarmin have the complication that many verbs that to a speaker of English might seem to serve auxiliary-like roles are not really auxiliaries at all, but rather what we might term 'pragmatic verbs', verbs which serve as building blocks for information structure rather than as a ways of signalling actions or states of participants, and these tend to be coordinated with other verbs rather than being in an auxiliary verb-main verb relationship. In Bryatesle, this is rather dealt with by means of a huge set of conjunctions and discourse particles. 


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