Summary of languages with SOV word order with case-marking vs. languages with SVO word order without case-marking
Ted Gibson
egibson at MIT.EDU
Fri Jan 27 17:53:57 UTC 2012
Dear Funknetters:
I got a lot of responses to my request, which I report below. Thank you to all who responded! You have been very helpful. I am working on summarizing what I am learning from the various papers that people have recommended for me.
Ted
> From: Ted Gibson <egibson at MIT.EDU>
> Date: January 21, 2012 2:52:56 PM EST
> To: funknet <funknet at mailman.rice.edu>, Tom Givon <tgivon at uoregon.edu>
> Subject: languages with SOV word order with case-marking vs. languages with SVO word order without case-marking
>
> Dear Funknet people:
>
> Can you please provide me with references for the claim that word order in language tends to shift between SOV word order with case-marking to SVO word order without case-marking? Or any similar such claim? I am citing Givon for this claim, but I have heard from others that there are some claims that pre-date him. I am interested in all such references: both pre- and post-Givon.
>
> Yours sincerely,
>
> Ted Gibson
>
1. Tom Givon (private email):
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Tom Givon <tgivon at uoregon.edu>
> Date: January 21, 2012 3:15:40 PM EST
> To: Ted Gibson <egibson at mit.edu>, "Heine, Bernd" <ama01 at uni-koeln.de>
> Subject: Re: languages with SOV word order with case-marking vs. languages with SVO word order without case-marking
>
>
> Dear Ted,
>
> I don't recall making this claim. Ever since my articles in 1971 (CLS 7) and 1974 (C. Li ed. "WO & WO Change") I have seen no support for any correlation between WO and lack of case-marking. What I have noted, repeatedly, are grammaticalization pathways that produce case-marking from either verbal or nominal sources, and that WO at the time of grammaticalization is the most crucial factor in determining whether case-marking will be re-positional or post-positional.
>
> The question of existence vs. non-existence of case-marking is entirely separate, and has to do with two separate issues:
>
> (i) Indirect pathways via which SUBJ & OBJ case-marking arises, what I call "secondary grammaticalization". Well known examples are:
> (a) INSTR > AGT of PASSIVE > ERG subject > NOM subject (Polynesian)
> (b) GEN subject (in nominalized clauses) > NOM subject in main clauses (Japanese)
> (c) DAT in subord clauses > ERG subject in main clauses (Carib)
> (d) GEN object in nominalized VPs > ACC object in main clauses (No. Uto-Aztecan , Ute)
> (e) DAT of possession > NOM subject (No. Iranian; Neo-Aramaic)
> (f) ALLATIVE > DATIVE > ACCUSATIVE (Spanish)
>
> (ii) Phonological attrition of case-marking (particularly NOM & ACC) (Indo-European, Semitic, etc.)
>
> These two general processes are independent of each other, and as far as I know they are totally independent of Word-Order typology.
>
> I am copying my friend Bernd Heine, since I am not on FUNKNET any more and he might be able to contribute to this discussion.
>
> I hope this helps. Best, TG
2. Jess Tauber
Begin forwarded message:
> From: jess tauber <phonosemantics at earthlink.net>
> Date: January 21, 2012 3:40:37 PM EST
> To: Ted Gibson <egibson at mit.edu>
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] languages with SOV word order with case-marking vs. languages with SVO word order without case-marking
> Reply-To: jess tauber <phonosemantics at earthlink.net>
>
> Hi- saw your inquiry. I don't have refs to any general hypothesis, but work on a language, Yahgan, from Tierra del Fuego that had a great deal of case marking with SOV typological features, yet was already by the mid 19th Century showing preferences for SVO ordering. Now, I haven't looked to see whether the distribution of case marking is different between the two orders, but would be willing to if you're interested.
>
> Sincerely,
> Jess Tauber
> (please respond using goldenratio at earthlink.net rather than phonosemantics... thanks)
3. Joan Bybee
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Joan Bybee <joan.bybee at gmail.com>
> Date: January 21, 2012 3:58:55 PM EST
> To: Ted Gibson <egibson at mit.edu>
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] languages with SOV word order with case-marking vs. languages with SVO word order without case-marking
>
> Theo Vennemann makes this claim in 'An explanation of drift' in 1975 in Charles Li (ed.) Word order and word order change (p. 289) and in some earlier papers he cites there. Of course, Theo and Talmy were both at UCLA in the early 70's and were both influenced by Greenberg's findings of 1966.
>
> Joan
4. Ron Smyth
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Ron Smyth <smyth at utsc.utoronto.ca>
> Date: January 21, 2012 6:31:08 PM EST
> To: Ted Gibson <egibson at mit.edu>
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] languages with SOV word order with case-marking vs. languages with SVO word order without case-marking
>
> Hi Ted! This caught my eye because in 1975 I wrote my Honours thesis on
> syntactic drift from Old Norse to Modern Icelandic, checking the sagas vs.
> modern Icelandic novels to see if they conformed with Greenberg's
> principles. Of course that was 37 years ago and I no longer have a copy,
> but it seems to my fading memory that Greenberg is where I first heard of
> this phenomenon. But of course he is the obvious place to look so you've
> probably already checked that out.
5. Olga Yokoyama
Begin forwarded message:
> From: "Yokoyama, Olga" <olga at humnet.ucla.edu>
> Date: January 21, 2012 7:05:34 PM EST
> To: Ted Gibson <egibson at mit.edu>
> Subject: RE: [FUNKNET] languages with SOV word order with case-marking vs. languages with SVO word order without case-marking
>
> Ted,
> Depending on what you mean by a "similar claim": I claim that in Russian there was (and in some registers perhaps it is still on-going) a shift between VSO and SVO accompanied by a change in intonational phrase boundary (Discourse and word order, p. 284 ff).
> Olga
>
> Olga T. Yokoyama
>
> Professor
> Department of Applied Linguistics
> University of California, Los Angeles
> Tel. (310) 825-7694
> Fax (310) 206-4118
> http://www.appling.ucla.edu
6. Matthew Dryer
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Matthew Dryer <dryer at buffalo.edu>
> Date: January 22, 2012 9:18:31 AM EST
> To: Ted Gibson <egibson at mit.edu>
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] languages with SOV word order with case-marking vs. languages with SVO word order without case-marking
>
>
> Ted,
>
> I'm not sure if your query refers explicitly to diachronic claims about this, but the following article discusses the synchronic relationship between case and word order
>
> Dryer, Matthew S. 2002. "Case Distinctions, Rich Verb Agreement, and Word Order Type". Theoretical Linguistics 28: 151-157.
>
> a nonfinal draft of which is downloadable from
>
> http://wings.buffalo.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/dryer/dryer/DryerTheoLing02.pdf
>
> This article is a response to the following, which also raises this issue:
>
> Hawkins, J.A. (2002) "Symmetries and asymmetries: their grammar, typology and parsing". Target article in peer reviewed issue of Theoretical Linguistics 28:95 149.
>
> Matthew Dryer
7. Freek Van der Velde
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Freek Van de Velde <Freek.VanDeVelde at arts.kuleuven.be>
> Date: January 22, 2012 1:08:29 PM EST
> To: "funknet at mailman.rice.edu" <funknet at mailman.rice.edu>
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] FUNKNET Digest, Vol 100, Issue 10
>
> Dear Ted,
> I assume you are familiar with the - not uncontroversial paper - by Murray Gell-Mann and Merritt Ruhlen that appeared a couple of months ago in PNAS ('The origin and evolution of word order')? I am not sure what they claim about case systems, but they do claim that languages tend to evolve from SOV to SVO. There is some reference to similar but earlier claims from Vennemann in the paper.
> Best regards,
> ---
> Freek Van de Velde
> http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/nedling_e/fvandevelde/
8. Kaius Sinnemäki
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Kaius Sinnemäki <sinnemaki at gmail.com>
> Date: January 22, 2012 1:38:58 PM EST
> To: Ted Gibson <egibson at mit.edu>
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] languages with SOV word order with case-marking vs. languages with SVO word order without case-marking
>
> Dear Ted,
>
> A number of people have worked on a similar hypothesis. Vennemann
> wrote about this in his 1973 and 1974 papers. I think Mallinson and
> Blake 1981 also discuss it briefly. Balthasar Bickel has also
> researched whether case marking tends to correlate with verb-final
> word order or not, using a sample of a few hundred languages. I have
> recently surveyed the correlation between word order and the absence
> of case and agreement with a sample of about 850 languages. Below some
> references. Hope these help
>
> Best,
> Kaius Sinnemäki
> University of Helsinki
>
>
>
> Bickel, Balthasar 2008b. A general method for the statistical
> evaluation of typological distributions. Manuscript.
> http://www.spw.uzh.ch/bickel-files/papers/.
> Mallinson, Graham & Barry J. Blake. 1981. Language typology:
> Cross-Linguistic studies in syntax. Amsterdam: North-Holland
> Publishing Company.
> Sinnemäki, Kaius 2010. Word order in zero-marking languages. Studies
> in Language 34(4): 869-912.
> Vennemann, Theo 1973. Explanation in syntax. In John Kimball (ed.),
> Syntax and semantics (vol. 2), 1 -50. New York: Academic Press.
> Vennemann, Theo 1974. Topics, subjects, and word order: From SXV to
> SVX via TVX. In John Anderson and Charles Jones (eds.), Historical
> linguistics: Proceedings of the first international congress of
> historical linguistics, Edinburgh, September 1973 (vol. II), 339-376.
> Amsterdam: North -Holland. Holland.
9. Bernd Heine
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Bernd Heine <Bernd.Heine at uni-koeln.de>
> Date: January 23, 2012 1:23:24 AM EST
> To: Ted Gibson <egibson at mit.edu>
> Cc: Tom Givon <tgivon at uoregon.edu>
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] languages with SOV word order with case-marking vs. languages with SVO word order without case-marking
>
> Dear Ted,
> Since Tom mentioned my name, here is at least a short response. Your hypothesis is interesting indeed and there are certainly some examples in support of it (such as from Indo-European to Romance and other languages). But I am not entirely sure whether we have sufficient cases of attested typological change to test the hypothesis, even in its weakened 'tend-to' format.
> I'd prefer to go with Tom and focus at this stage on individual pathways of grammaticalization, both giving rise to new case markers and leading to the decline and loss of existing case markers, rather than attempting overall comparisons of language systems. And the pathways he listed are roughly the ones that I also had in mind when I read your message.
> With best wishes for your research,
> Bernd
10. Danny Hieber
> From: "Daniel W. Hieber" <dwhieb at gmail.com>
> Date: January 23, 2012 10:10:37 AM EST
> To: "'Ted Gibson'" <egibson at mit.edu>, "'funknet'" <funknet at mailman.rice.edu>, "'Tom Givon'" <tgivon at uoregon.edu>
> Subject: RE: [FUNKNET] languages with SOV word order with case-marking vs. languages with SVO word order without case-marking
>
> Hi Ted,
>
> Comrie discusses this in his book Language Universals & Linguistic Typology,
> pp. 213-214, citing specifically Vennemann 1974 (full citation below),
> although Comrie is rather critical of his claims. Vennemann's idea is also
> critiqued by Hawkins 1983, chs. 5-6.
>
> Vennemann, Theo. 1984. Typology, universals and change of language. In Jacek
> Fisiak (ed.), Historical Syntax. Trends in Linguistics: Studies and
> Monographs 23. Berlin: Mouton, 593-612.
>
> Hawkins, John A. 1983. Word order universals. Quantitative Analyses of
> Linguistic Structure. New York: Academic Press.
>
> Hope that helps,
>
> Danny Hieber
11. Tom Givon again
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Tom Givon <tgivon at uoregon.edu>
> Date: January 23, 2012 12:58:28 PM EST
> To: "Daniel W. Hieber" <dwhieb at gmail.com>
> Cc: "'Ted Gibson'" <egibson at mit.edu>
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] languages with SOV word order with case-marking vs. languages with SVO word order without case-marking
>
>
> Yes, Danny. Vennemann (1973) was responsible for this suggestion, based solely on Indo-European. (It was during A summer conference at UC Santa Cruz, one of the early Syntax & Semantics volumes, and I happened to be there & indeed objected, but to no avail). I don't know if Ted shared with you my response (I am not on FUNKNET anymore, so it went only to him). With aplogy to Ted, Here it is. Cheers, TG
12. Danny Hieber again
Begin forwarded message:
> From: "Daniel W. Hieber" <dwhieb at gmail.com>
> Date: January 23, 2012 4:27:44 PM EST
> To: "'Tom Givon'" <tgivon at uoregon.edu>
> Cc: "'Ted Gibson'" <egibson at mit.edu>
> Subject: RE: [FUNKNET] languages with SOV word order with case-marking vs. languages with SVO word order without case-marking
>
> Hi Tom,
>
> Thanks for sending that along. While Vennemann's suggestion seems reasonable
> on its face, I'm inclined to agree with you. If an attrition of case marking
> causes ambiguity for SOV languages, thus causing the switch to SVO, then we
> have to ask why there even exist SOV languages without case marking at all.
> But since there are clearly numerous examples of SOV languages without case
> marking, Vennemann's suggestion seems unlikely. I wouldn't want to discount
> the idea entirely - it does seem possible that, for some specific languages
> in the past, an attrition in case marking was one of the factors
> contributing to a switch from SOV to SVO word order. But this would just be
> one possible contributing factor to one possible pathway of word order
> change.
>
> All the best,
>
> Danny
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