the occurrence contrast between VOS and OVS orders

[bingfu Lu]

Dear Prof. Hammarström,
  Thanks for your message!
  Unfortunately, I cannot know the details of your data since I cannot here get into the webpage you recommended.
  Anyway, your data is different from all data I have seen so far. For example, 
  In WALS, Dryer provides the following contrast: VOS 26, OVS 9, in his 1228-language data.
  My interest is that there is a parallel between orders of S, V, O and the orders of R(ecipient), V and T(heme) in terms of frequency.  VTR is significantly more frequent than TVR. In fact, I havn't found any TVR language so far.  If somebody can provide me with a data of TVR, I should appreciate it very much!
  Based on the parallel of the two contrasts, I conjecture that there is a common explanation behind the two contrasts.  That is why I asked for the explanation of the contrast between VOS and OVS. 
  My tentative explanation of the contrast between VOS and OVS is that Proximity Principle (V-O bounding) does not work on surface, since the distance between OV and VS in OVS is actually the same on surface, but it works in VOS.  Any feedback will be most welcome!
   
  Best
  Bingfu

Harald Hammarström <harald at BOMBO.SE> wrote:
  Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 02:40:21 +0200
From: Harald Hammarström <harald at BOMBO.SE>
Subject: Re: the occurrence contrast between VOS and OVS orders
To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG

> 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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20070516/bbcd0d36/attachment.htm>