<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "></span></blockquote><div>Richard,</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); ">1) Do the earliest languages in a family follow SOV order?</span></blockquote><div><br></div>The answer to this question can't really help very much, as the earliest languages of a family have no special status. For example, Proto Austronesian is the earliest *reconstructable* stage of the Austronesian family, but it must itself have been a descendant of some other at present (and probably forever) unknown earlier language, indeed of a whole descent line going back to whenever human beings first produced language. (Incidentally, Proto Austronesian seems to have been verb-initial, but I think that's a red herring.) The only useful diachronic argument would be one that showed that in the past more languages were SOV than SVO (and I don't think that is borne out by current evidence, which in any case covers only a fairly small part of the span of human linguistic history). But if this were so, then one would indeed have a paradox implicit in your question 2 below. If there was a diachronic tendency for languages to shift from SOV to SVO, then it would appear that this was a natural tendency, but this tendency is apparently at odds with the claim 'the natural human instinct is to think in SOV order'. Whatever way you try to frame the 'naturalness' argument, it entails a paradox -- implying that neither order is more 'natural' than the other.<div><br></div><div><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); ">2) Why on earth should they change to another order? (Except, of course, if they come across someone else who has already done it, but then the explanation is required for the 'someone else' doing it).</span></blockquote><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div>It is remarkably difficult to find cases of change from OV to VO or vice versa that are free from contact.</div><div><br></div><div>- Malcolm<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">_____________________________________</div><div><br></div><div>Emeritus Professor Malcolm Ross</div><div>Department of Linguistics</div><div>Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies</div><div>Building No. 9, The Australian National University</div><div>CANBERRA A.C.T. 0200, Australia</div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><a href="http://rspas.anu.edu.au/people/personal/rossm_ling.php">http://rspas.anu.edu.au/people/personal/rossm_ling.php</a><div>http://rspas.anu.edu.au/linguistics/projects/biomdr.html</div><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div>ANU CRICOS Provider Number is 00120C </div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br><div><div>On 05/07/2008, at 5:01 PM, Richard Parker wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" style="position: static; z-index: auto; "><tbody><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><p>PNAS has published an apparently clever experiment that suggests the natural human instinct is to think in SOV order, while about 50% of languages actually use SVO order.</p><div> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p>For a blog explaining the paper, see: </p><p><a href="http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/roots-of-langua.html">http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/roots-of-langua.html</a></p><div> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p>and for the paper itself:</p><p><a href="http://coconutstudio.com/0710060105.full.pdf">http://coconutstudio.com/0710060105.full.pdf</a></p><div> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p>The experimenters tested gestural order amongst English, Spanish, Chinese (presumably Mandarin) and Turkish. English and Spanish are SVO, as is Chinese (although it seems to be undergoing a change) but Turkish is strictly SOV. All of them tended mostly to 'act out' simple sentences in SOV order, quite counter-intuitively.</p><div> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p>The researchers also found that in 'non-schooled' sign languages this is the preferred order.</p><div> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p>I would be very interested in hearing reactions to this from professionals, especially to the questions raised by the researchers themselves:</p><div> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p>1) Do the earliest languages in a family follow SOV order?</p><p>2) Why on earth should they change to another order? (Except, of course, if they come across someone else who has already done it, but then the explanation is required for the 'someone else' doing it).</p><p>3) Does language really reflect thinking processes? Sapir-Whorf, anyone?</p><div> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p>regards</p><div> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p>Richard</p><p>Austronesian Counting now up at: <a href="http://austronesiancounting.wordpress.com/">http://austronesiancounting.wordpress.com/</a></p></td></tr></tbody></table>_______________________________________________<br>An-lang mailing list<br><a href="mailto:An-lang@anu.edu.au">An-lang@anu.edu.au</a><br>http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/an-lang<br></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>