Object-initial languages

[Paul Hopper]

Ron Kuzar's reformulation of his question seems to bring us back full
circle to a body of literature on the subject of discourse and word order
that was around in the 1970s and 1980s, and that included such issues as
foregrounding/backgrounding, transitivity, topic continuity, default word
order, thematicity, and so on.  These studies usually took narrative as the
prime genre and assumed that conclusions based on continuous monologic
narrative would count as generally valid. Many of these conclusions had to
be revised when conversational data were introduced. Desmond Derbyshire's
work on Hixkaryana in the 1970s (championed by Geoff Pullum) discussed in
detail both clause and discourse aspects of OVS languages. John Myhill, of
the University of Haifa, did important studies of the alternation of VS and
SV in languages like Hebrew. The bibliography on all these issues of the
pragmatics of word order is quite large.

Paul Hopper

---------------------------
Paul Hopper
Thomas S. Baker Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
Telephone (412) 268-7174
Fax (412) 268-7989



--On Friday, October 25, 2002 10:19 AM +0200 Ron Kuzar
<kuzar at research.haifa.ac.il> wrote:

Thanks to all those who have answered both on Funknet and privately.
Clearly, the notion of default order is slippery. So let me reformulate
and narrow down my question: the word order that I am interested in is
the one used for narrating a story.
Have a look at the following English excerpt taken from the Brown corpus.
I have put the narrative sentences which form the skeleton of the story
in square brackets.

N12 0570  3       [Curt moved over beside the door and waited].
[Presently
N12 0580  1    he heard footsteps crossing the yard, and Jess's smothered
N12 0580 10    curses]. [The door swung open], and [Jess said sourly],
N12 0590  9    "What the hell's the matter with you?"
N12 0600  5       [The horse continued to snort]. [Curt doubted that
N12 0610  4    any animal belonging to Jess would find much reassurance
N12 0620  1    in its owner's voice.]
N12 0620  5       [Jess cursed again, and entered the barn]. [A match
N12 0630  5    flared], and [he reached above his head to light a
lantern
N12 0640  1    which hung from a wire loop]. As he crossed to the side
N12 0640 13    of the stall, [Curt drew his gun and clicked back the
N12 0650 10    hammer.]
N12 0650 11       "Before you try anything", [he said]. "Remember what
N12 0660  8    happened to Gruller".
N12 0670  1       [Jess caught his breath in surprise]. [He started to
N12 0670 10    reach for his gun], but apparently thought better of
N12 0680  9    it.
N12 0680 10       "That's the stuff", [Curt said]. "Just hold it that
N12 0690  9    way". [He reached out to pull the door shut and fasten
N12 0700  8    it with a sliding bolt]. "You and I have a little talking
N12 0710  6    to do, Jess. You won't be needing this". [He moved up
N12 0720  4    and lifted Jess's pistol out of its holster.]

The kind of English employed here has a rather sweeping SV order. In
other English styles "a match flared" may be rendered as "there flared a
match" and "Curt said" could be "said Curt". Modern Hebrew may also have
inversion of SV to VS after initial adjuncts, to mark a higher register.
In VS languages (in the same narrow sense) such as Biblical Hebrew and
Written Standard Arabic, most of these sentences would have VS order.
In sum, we obviously have languages with subject-initial and
verb-initial narrative styles.
My question is: are there languages in which these sentences - or many
or most of them - would be in an object-initial order?
I hope the question is clearer now.
Thanks
Roni
====================================
                  Dr. Ron Kuzar
Address:   Department of English Language and Literature
                  University of Haifa
                  IL-31905 Haifa, Israel
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