When using gestures, rules of grammar remain S-O-V

Re:When using gestures, rules of grammar remain S-O-V by karmaVS on Thursday January 15, 2009 @07:30PM (#435978)

Despite what the article seems to imply, S-O-V is also the most common standard word order (in number of languages, though almost certainly not in number of native speakers, given that both English & Chinese are both S-V-O)

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Re:When using gestures, rules of grammar remain S-O-V by iamwil on Friday January 16, 2009 @01:09AM (#436233)

aren't most latin language descendents S-V-O? The only S-O-V languages I can think of off the top of my head are Japanese and Korean. Anyone know about African or South American languages?

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Re:When using gestures, rules of grammar remain S-O-V by Scriptor on Friday January 16, 2009 @02:36AM (#436305)

Actually, French is S-O-V when you're using pronouns. Some quick testing with Google Translate suggests that Spanish might follow the same rule as well.

My first language, Bengali, an Indo-European language spoken in Bangladesh and thus distantly related to Latin, is S-O-V. I'm assuming from this that Hindi and other Indian subcontinental languages are as well.

I think S-O-V makes sense when communicating visually. Say someone kicks a ball. Initially you see a person and a ball. Then you see the person kick it. The action comes after the presence of the two objects. You don't see a person, see him kick, and only then see the ball.

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Re:When using gestures, rules of grammar remain S-O-V by maw on Friday January 16, 2009 @10:33AM (#436726)

Actually, French is S-O-V when you're using pronouns.

Can you share an example? Admittedly, my French isn't too hot, but I'm curious.

I'd be interested in an example Spanish (which I'm a lot better at than French) too.

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Re:When using gestures, rules of grammar remain S-O-V by Scriptor on Friday January 16, 2009 @11:24AM (#436790)

My French is a bit rusty, but here are some examples I can think of right now:

Je le mange - I eat it.

Je tu le donne - I give it to you.

'le' means 'it', and 'tu' means 'you'. So literally, the first example would be "I it eat", and the second would be "I to you it give".

I don't know Spanish very well, but I pulled this off of Google translate:

Yo lo vi - I saw it

I'm assuming 'lo' is 'it', and 'vi' is 'saw'.

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Re:When using gestures, rules of grammar remain S-O-V by maw on Friday January 16, 2009 @05:30PM (#437386)

I'm assuming 'lo' is 'it', and 'vi' is 'saw'.

Duh! Yes, you are of course correct. My excuse for forgetting: familiarity might not always breed contempt, but sometimes it breeds a real lack of observation!

As an aside, archaic (and archaically styled) Spanish is often SVO even with object pronouns. So you'll see things like "díjole" in Quijote.

(It's "te" and not "tu" in French, btw. Tu's only used as a subject.)

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Re:When using gestures, rules of grammar remain S-O-V by lunchbox on Friday January 16, 2009 @05:34AM (#436426)

Japanese, Burmese, Basque, Latin, Pashto.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject_Object_Verb

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Re:When using gestures, rules of grammar remain S-O-V by khafra on Friday January 16, 2009 @11:52AM (#436840)

Latin itself was flexible, but usually S-O-V. It was long ago I learned it, around the same time that I started using an HP-48. I was pretty pleased with myself when I noticed the similarity with reverse polish.

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