the occurrence contrast between VOS and OVS orders

[Harald Hammarström]

>  Dear colleagues,
>
>  I wonder if anyone has explained the distributional contrast between VOS
>  languages and OVS languiages.  The former is significantly frequent 
>  than the latter.

Dear Prof. Lu,
In my data at least, VOS is _not_ significantly more frequent than 
OVS (8/346 vs. 6/346 which is not statistically significant: p > 0.24).
http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~harald2/alt2007.pdf
Those figures are controlled for genetic bias, but not for areal bias.
The VOS languages in that sample were "Xinca", Wari', Mezquital Otomi, 
Inesen~o, Kariri, Washco-Wishram, Cayuvava, Garawa. (However, More recent
data that I consulted since, shows that Garawa is better classified
as VSO/VOS.) The OVS languages were Ona, En~epa, Macuna, Urarina,
Waikuri, Ngarinyin. The only possible cases where one could argue
areal influence would be En~epa-Macuna among the OVS and Otomi-Xinca
among the VOS -- that is, there is no areal bias that could account
for differences in the incidence of OVS vs. VOS languages.

H