Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T00:49:48.562Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

SVO languages and the OV: VO typology1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Matthew S. Dryer
Matthew S. Dryer
Affiliation:
State University of New York at BuffaloDepartment of Linguistics, SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Greenberg (1963) formulated a number of implicational universals that refer to the order of various syntactic elements. He classified languages on the basis of their order of subject, object and verb into three types, which he labelled I, II and III, and which correspond to what are commonly known as VSO, SVO and SOV languages, respectively. Since that time, evidence for the existence of the three other logically possible orders, VOS, OVS and OSV, has been presented (see Keenan, 1978; Derbyshire & Pullum, 1981, 1986), thus leaving us with a typology of six types. Lehmann (1973, 1978) and Vennemann (1974, 1976) collapsed these six types into two types OV and VO. Implicit in this move is the idea that the fundamental parameter is the order of verb and object and that the position of the subject is less important. In treating VSO, VOS and SVO as subtypes of the general type VO, the claim is that these three types are similar to each other in their other word order characteristics and different from OV languages. More recently, a number of linguists, including Comrie (1981: 90, 94–95; 1989: 96, 100–101), Mallinson & Blake (1981: 379), Siewierska (1988: 18–19) and Payne (1990: 19), but most particularly Hawkins (1980: 199; 1983: 30), have criticized Lehmann and Vennemann for collapsing VSO, VOS and SVO languages into a single category VO. They all argue that the available evidence does not support the claim that SVO languages pattern like VSO and VOS languages. The purpose of this paper is to argue that, although some of these criticisms are not without merit, Lehmann and Vennemann were largely right: with certain well-defined exceptions, the word order properties of SVO languages differ little from those of VSO and VOS languages. In short, it will be shown that with respect to a large number of word order characteristics, we do find a basic split between VO and OV languages.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , September 1991 , pp. 443 - 482
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allen, W. S. (1964). Transitivity and possession. Lg 40. 337–343.Google Scholar
Bendor-Samuel, D. (1972). Hierarchical structures in Guajajara. Norman, Okla.: Summer Institute of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Blake, B. (1988). Redefining Pama-Nyungan: towards the prehistory of Australian languages. Aboriginal Linguistics 1. 1–90.Google Scholar
Campbell, L., Bubenik, V. & Saxon, L. (1988). Word order universals: refinements and clarifications. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 33. 209–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, L. & Mithun, M. (1979). Introduction: North American Indian historical linguistics in current perspective. In Campbell, L. & Mithun, M. (eds) The languages of native America: historical and comparative assessment. Austin: University of Texas Press. 3–69.Google Scholar
Comrie, B. (1981). Language universals and linguistic typology, 1st edn.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Comrie, B. (1989). Language universals and linguistic typology. 2nd edn.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dahl, Ö. (1979). Typology of sentence negation. Linguistics 17. 79–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derbyshire, D. C. & Pullum, G. K. (1981). Object-initial languages. IJAL 47. 192–214.Google Scholar
Derbyshire, D. C. & Pullum, G. K. (1986). Introduction. In Derbyshire, D. C. & Pullum, G. K. (eds) Handbook of Amazonian languages, vol. 1. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, M. S. (1980). The positional tendencies of sentential noun phrases in universal grammar. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 25. 123–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, M. S. (1988a). Object–verb order and adjective-noun order: dispelling a myth. Lingua 74. 77–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, M. S. (1988b). Universals of negative position. In Hammond, M., Moravcsik, E. & Wirth, J. (eds) Studies in syntactic typology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 93–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, M. S. (1989a). Article-noun order. Papers from the 25th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society, 83–97.Google Scholar
Dryer, M. S. (1989b). Discourse-governed word order and word order typology. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 4. 69–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, M. S. (1989c). Large linguistic areas and language sampling. Studies in Language 13. 257–292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, M. S. (1989d). Plural words. Linguistics 27. 865–895.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dwyer, D. J. (1989). Mande. In Bendor-Samuel, J. (ed.) The Niger-Congo languages. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. 47–65.Google Scholar
Engel, R. & Longacre, R. E. (1963). Syntactic matrices in Ostuacan Zoque. IJAL 29. 331–344.Google Scholar
Furby, E. S.&Furby, C. E. (1977). A preliminary analysis of Garawa phrases and clauses. (Pacific Linguistics, series B, 42.) Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Greenberg, J. H. (1963). Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In Greenberg, J. H. (ed.) Universals of language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 73–113.Google Scholar
Harrison, C. H. (1986). Verb prominence, verb initialness, ergativity, and typological disharmony in Guajajara. In Derbyshire, D. C. & Pullum, G. K. (eds) Handbook of Amazonian languages, vol. 1. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 407–439.Google Scholar
Harrison, R., Harrison, M. & Cástulo, G. H. (1981). Diccionario Zoque de Copainalá. Mexico City: Summer Institute of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (1979). Implicational universals as predictors of word order change. Lg 55. 618–648.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (1980). On implicational and distributional universals of word order. JL 16. 193–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (1982). Cross-Category Harmony, X-bar and the predictions of markedness. JL 18. 1–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (1983). Word order universals. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (1990). A parsing theory of word order universals. LIn 21. 223–261.Google Scholar
Hive, Rev. H. E. (1948). A Cree grammar. Toronto: The Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada.Google Scholar
Hoijer, H. (1972). Tonkawa texts. (University of California Publications in Linguistics, 73.) Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Jacobs, G. (1970). Bimoba syntax: a syntagmatic analysis. (Language Monographs, 1.) Ghana: University of Ghana.Google Scholar
Jenewari, C. E. W. (1989). Ijoid. In Bendor-Samuel, J. (ed.) The Niger–Congo languages. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. 105–118.Google Scholar
Keenan, E. (1978). The syntax of subject-final languages. In Lehmann, W. P. (ed.) Syntactic typology. Austin: University of Texas Press. 267–327.Google Scholar
Lehmann, W. P. (1973). A structural principle of language and its implications. Lg 49. 42–66.Google Scholar
Lehmann, W. P. (1978). The great underlying ground-plans. In Lehmann, W. P. (ed.) Syntactic typology. Austin: University of Texas Press. 3–55.Google Scholar
Li, C. N. & Thompson, S. A. (1974). Co-verbs in Mandarin Chinese: verbs or prepositions? Journal of Chinese Linguistics 2. 257–278.Google Scholar
Li, C. N. & Thompson, S. A. (1981). Mandarin Chinese: a functional reference grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mallinson, G. & Blake, B. J. (1981). Language typology. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Nichols, J. (1990). Linguistic diversity and the settlement of the New World. Lg 66. 475–521.Google Scholar
Payne, D. L. (1986). Basic constituent order in Yagua clauses: implications for word order universals. In Derbyshire, D. C. & Pullum, G. K. (eds) Handbook of Amazonian languages, vol. 1. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 440–465.Google Scholar
Payne, D. L. (1987). Information structuring in Papago narrative discourse. Lg 63. 783–804.Google Scholar
Payne, D. L. (1990). The pragmatics of word order: typological dimensions of verb initial languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prost, R. P. A. (1956). La Langue Sonay et ses dialectes. (Mémoires de l'Institut Français d'Afrique Noire, 47.) Dakar: Institut Français d'Afrique Noire.Google Scholar
Prost, R. P. A. (1964). Contribution à l'étude des langues voltaïques. (Mémoires de l'Institut Français d'Afrique Noire, 70.) Dakar: Institut Français d'Afrique Noire.Google Scholar
Raz, S. (1983). Tigre grammar and texts. Malibu: Undena.Google Scholar
Samarin, W. J. (1966). The Gbeya language: grammar texts, and vocabularies. (University of California Publications in Linguistics, 44.) Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Senft, G. (1986). Kilivila, the language of the Trobriand Islanders. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siewierska, A. (1988). Word order rules. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Sun, C.-F. & Givón, T. (1985). On the so-called SOV word order in Mandarin Chinese. Lg 61. 329–351.Google Scholar
Vennemann, T. (1974). Analogy in generative grammar: the origin of word order. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress of Linguists (1972). Bologna: il Mulino. 79–83.Google Scholar
Vennemann, T. (1976). Categorial grammar and the order of meaningful elements. In Juilland, A. (ed.) Linguistic studies offered to Joseph Greenberg on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. Saratoga, Calif.: Anma Libri. 615–634.Google Scholar
Voegelin, C. F. & Voegelin, F. M. (1977). Classification and index of the world's languages. New York: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Waterhouse, V. (1962). The grammatical structure of Oaxaca Chontal. (International Journal of American Linguistics, 28, no. 2, part 2.)Google Scholar
Welmers, W. E. (1976). A grammar of Vai. (University of California Publications in Linguistics, 84.) Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Williamson, K. (1965). A grammar of the Kolokuma dialect of Ijo. (West African Language Monographs, 2.) Cambridge University Press in association with the West African Languages Survey and the Institute of African Studies, Ibadan, Nigeria.Google Scholar
Wolfe, E. (1983). A grammar of the Lamang language. Glückstadt: J. J. Augustin.Google Scholar