[Lingtyp] Subject-verb inversion with transitive verbs

[David Gil]

Dear all,

On 12/04/2020 16:22, Ernei Ribeiro wrote:
>
> (4) Are there languages without agreement and without case morphology 
> on nouns that allow subject-verb inversion with transitive verbs?
>
Malay/Indonesian would be an example of such a language. For example, in 
Jakarta Indonesian, a language without agreement or cae morphology, a 
corpus study of two verbs, /beli/ 'buy' and /makan/ 'eat', found SVO 
order in 88% and 94% of clauses containing both arguments, but also VOS 
order in 7% and 2% of such clauses.

Conners, Thomas, John Bowden and David Gil (2015) "Valency Classes in 
Jakarta Indonesian", in A. Malchukov and B. Comrie eds., /Valency 
Classes in the World's Languages/, DeGruyter Mouton, Berlin, 941-986.

I suspect similar facts hold for lots of languages across western Indonesia.

David

-- 
David Gil
  
Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
  
Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-556825895
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091

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