Re: Q-kau

[Goran Topic <topic@math.hr>]

> Jorge:
> >What is so malglico about kau? I like it very much, and I don't think
> >we can drop it.
>
> I believe that it is malglico, or at leats malropno, to label such things
> as "questions", indirect or otherwise.  Let's let Veijo and Ken Shan (or Cowan
> with his Chinese linguist hat on) tell us about indirection in Finnish,
> Japanese, and Chinese.

I completely agree. No "questions" there. See my other post to djer.
Croatian is not that different here from most of the Indoeuropean langs,
everything works about the same as in English...

> BTW, I am also interested in how a language with totally free word order
> handles the quantificational problems.  Esperanto claims to have totally free
> word order - how does it deal with "Everybody loves somebody" with object
> first?  Any other order-free languages provide insights?

Croatian is almost usually said to be mostly order-free, though some
constructions are not allowed, and some are outright weird (although
everything can be used with licentia poetica). Quantification is
usually order dependant, though, even if word functions are quite
determined by cases. Example

Svi = Nom. pl. = everybody (S)
Nekoga = Acc. sg. = somebody (O)
Vole = 3.p. pl. ind. pres. act. = loves (V)

1. Svi vole nekoga.     Everybody loves somebody.      roda prami de
2. Svi nekoga vole.     Everybody loves SOMEBODY.      roda de prami
3. Vole svi nekoga.     True, Evrybdy LOVES smbdy.     prami fa roda de
                        (A bit strange).
4. Vole nekoga svi.     Very weird. I don't want to bother analysing.
5. Nekoga svi vole.     Ex Everybody loves x.          de roda se prami
6. Nekoga vole svi.     EXISTS x: Everybody loves x.   de se prami roda
                        (A bit strange)

1. is normal sentence in its usual order (SVO). All others are
stylistically marked, emphasising various parts of the sentence.
Most of sentences can be pronounced differently, or used in such
a context so that you can get new meaning with the same word order.
Emphasis can be important in such cases. Like, take 5.:

Nekoga svi vole.

._._.___.___________normal tone
           . .

means {de roda se prami}, but

Nekoga SVI vole.
        ^
____._______________normal tone
  .
.          . .

is {roda zo'u de da se prami}={roda prami de}

But things like this come only in very phatic speech or poetic text.

(the dots represent melody of the sentence, big letters are emphasis)

> lojbab

co'o mi'e. goran.

--
Learn languages! The more langs you know, the more incomprehensible you can get
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