Re: VMs: Natural-language weirdoes. Was: excessive frequency of doubles...

[Koontz John E <John.Koontz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 21 Aug 2004, Jacques Guy wrote:
> It took me a while to cope with the Japanese word order. Something
> like six months. I thought I'd never make it. Then all of a sudden,
> I could construct my sentences backwards. At about the same time,
> I manage to cope with the lack of personal pronouns.

SOV word order is a bit confusing at first when you're used to SVO, the
common European order.  I really know very little of Japanese, but I had
the same sort of difficulties coming to grip with Siouan syntax, also SOV.
However, Siouan languages have pronominal marking in the form of verb
prefixes, so I was spared that!  Of course, the third person is unmarked
(or zero-marked) and there is no gender system in most of the languages,
so there things are reminiscent of your Rapa Nui experience.  A few
distinguish shape/position, but only certain auxiliaries and in definite
articles, not in pesonal concord.  Not surprisingly, some of the languages
do have switch reference systems.
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