A 'drift' from OV to VO?

Sun Jan 25 03:17:48 UTC 1998

This is about Fritz's question, which of course touched me deeply.  Here I
go.

In my dissertation on Basque word order (UC Berkeley 1997) I proposed a
solution for the "original" predominance of OV order as well as for the
predominance of OV > VO shifts over VO > VO shift.

My argument goes like this, in summarized form:

1) Word order in most languages (even in this odd language known as English)
is best seen in terms not of grammatical relations, but of the pragmatic
relations topic and focus.  In my view, every assertion has a focus element,
a most newsworthy, noteworthy, "dynamic", or "focal" idea, which bears the
main accent of the rheme (rheme = assertion minus settings; topics are a
type of setting).

Most assertions, though not all, also have a topic (the referential "ground"
of the assertion, a special type of "setting"), which in running discourse
is typically expressed covertly (by agreement or an unaccented verb-bound
pronoun.  (Assertions which don't have topics are typically those in which
the subject, the default topic, is the focus and no other argument is
filling the topic role.)

There is a strong correlation between grammatical subject and topic, on the
one hand and grammatical object (when there is one) and focus.  Indeed, the
category subject seems to be but the grammaticalization of the category
topic (although not all subjects are topics, and some are indeed foci).

2) The focus element, besides being accented, typically goes either in
(1) F1 position: Right before the verb, which is also rheme-first position,
only preceded by any settings there might be, including a phrasal topic; or
it goes in
(2) F2 position: Right after the verb (rheme-second position); or finally
(3) It may also be "bumped" to the end of the rheme, or "dislocated" to the
right, as it were, into an intonation unit of its own (not to be confused
with so-called "right dislocation" in English, which is really an antitopic
construction).

3) Languages fall into two basic types:
Type 1: those which place the focus constituent consistently in F1 position
(right before the verb), and never in F2 position, (so-called OV languages);
and
Type 2: languages which place the focus constituent either in F1 position
(right before the verb) OR in F2 position (right after the verb), depending
on the construction and depending on the degree of salience, or focality of
the focus in the assertion.  More focal foci go in F1 position and less
focal ones in F2 position.
(Focus bumping is a possibility in either language type, though it may be
rare in some rigid Type 1 languages).

Thus in Spanish, for example, a "VO language", in declarative assertions
(statements) a complement focus constituent goes after the verb (F2
position), regardless of whether it is an object or the subject (when the
focus is the verbal idea or the "polarity"--in emphatic or contrastive
assertions--they go in F1 position).  In emphatic or contrastive assertions,
as well as in content questions, where the focus is very focal, the focus
constituents goes before the verb (F1 position).
(English is a funny VO language in that a subject focus goes in F1 position.
But most VO languages seem to be like Spanish.)

In an "OV language", on the other hand, the focus is always in F1 position,
regardless of the construction or the degree of focality of the focus.

In other words, each system has its merits. "OV languages" are more
consistent than "VO languages" in focus placement, and "VO languages" have a
syntactic means of coding different degrees of focality (marked and
unmarked), at least for complement foci.

4) Word order change: OV > VO order change consists in the development of a
secondary position for a focus constituent, namely F2 position, in a
language which traditionally only used F1 position.  And VO > OV order
change consists in the loss of F2 position for focus constituents in
languages that had it at one time.

-------------------------
So, why is OV > VO order change more common than the inverse:

1) I believe that there is a relatively simple mechanism for the development
of an F2 position in a Type 1 language, namely through the gradual overuse
of the strategy of focus bumping to an intonation unit of its own following
the main assertion.  This, I believe, is what is happening in modern spoken
Basque, presumably under the influence of Romance languages (all Basque
speakers are bilingual now).  Remember that focus bumping is available to
both Type 1 and Type 2 languages, though VO languages presumably use it more
often for a variety of reasons.  I believe that the overuse of focus bumping
leads to the reanalysis of rheme-final position as rheme-second (F2)
position, since, after all, in actual speech there are hardly ever any
constituents between the verb and a bumped focus, the separation being
primarily an intonational one.

2) I believe that losing an F2 position ("VO > OV"), that is, losing a
contrast, is a much less common change because there isn't a simple
mechanism which favors that change and perhaps also for unknown cognitive
reasons.  The process of losing F2 focus position would also seem to require
a long period in which the language is relatively free of contact with VO
languages, which in general use the focus bumping strategy to a relatively
significant degree.  Since language contact seems to have been on the
increase in the last few thousand years, this might in part explain the
preponderance of Type 1 > Type 2 change in the historical record.

I hope you followed me this far.  Please let me know what you think.

Cheers,

Jon
________________________________
Jon Aske - Jon.Aske at salem.mass.edu
Department of Foreign Languages
Meier Hall 248B
Salem State College
Salem, Massachusetts 01970
978/741-6479
__________________________
Jon Aske - aske at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~aske/
__________________________
Conran's Law: First things first; second things never.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: FUNKNET -- Discussion of issues in Functional Linguistics
> [mailto:FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU]On Behalf Of Frederick Newmeyer
> Sent: Saturday, January 24, 1998 6:07 PM
> To: FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU
> Subject: A 'drift' from OV to VO?
>
>
> Matthew Dryer has shown that, once we correct for areal and genetic bias,
> the 'preference' for OV order is greater than that for VO order in the
> world's languages. But interestingly, I have seen it claimed in a variety
> of places that attested (or uncontroversially reconstructed) word order
> changes from OV to VO are far more common than those from VO to OV.
>
> My first question is how widely accepted is such a claim among historical
> linguists and typologists? Is there much support for such an idea and its
> implication of an overall general 'drift' from OV to VO?
>
> If this claim seems well motivated, the conjunction of the 'preference'
> for OV and the 'drift' to VO is very curious, no? One might even conclude
> that the OV preference is a remnant of a 'proto-world' OV (caused by
> what?), which functional forces (but what functional forces?) are skewing
> gradually to VO. And, indeed, linguists coming from a variety of
> directions (Venneman, Givon, Bichakjian, and others) have concluded
> something very much along those lines.
>
> I'm curious what thoughts FUNKNET subscribers might have on this question.
> I'll summarize if there is enough interest.
>
> Fritz Newmeyer
> fjn at u.washington.edu
>