Re: All agglutinative languages are SOV-ordered?

From: John Atkinson (johnacko_at_bigpond.com)
Date: 02/11/05 

Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 01:25:29 GMT

"Aslan Kral" <aslanski2002@yahoo.com> wrote...
>
> "Wiktor S." <wswiktor@poczta.fmv>, haber iletisinde šunlari
> yazdi:cufh9g$6qp$1@news.onet.pl...

> > > I guess there is no agreement on Basque being SOV or SVO.
> > > Anyway I did a search using "basque sov svo frequency". I came across
> > > one document that classifies SOV languages as SOV-rigid (SOVr) or
> > > SOV-nonrigid (SOVnr).
> > > http://www.math.bas.bg/~peri/CL2.pdf
> >
> > What I found interesting is that out of 30 languages, the half does not
> > break any of stated universals, while some break many:
> >
> > Finnish 7
> > Thai 7
> > Burushaski 6
> > Guarani 5
> > Basque 5
> > Guarani 4
> > Swahili 4
> > Norwegian 3
> > Chibcha 2
> > Loritja 2
> > Songhai 2
> > Quechua 2
> > Nubian 2
> > Hindi 2
> > Burmese 1
> >
> > why are Finnish, Thai, and Burushaski such exceptional?

Indeed, and why does Guarani appear twice on this list :-)

> I would say they
> > aren't, but the universals are not optimal. There must be some relations
> > between them, which are not considered here at all.
> >
> Most of the universals are based on 7 to 9 examples. Not good enough.
> Statistically number of samples should be close to or not less than 30.

Many workers have criticised Greenberg's data, not only because his sample
numbers were quite small, but also because they weren't randomly distributed
over the world's languages, or language families (most likely, his main
selection criterion was that they were languages he could readily get data
on). Many later authors have attempted to validate Greenberg's universals
using more adequate samples. Probably the "best" sample so far is that used
by Johanna Nichols, described in her book "Linguistic diversity in Space and
Time".

It would be interesting to see how the languages from one of these more
comprehensive lists arrange themselves on Wiktor's "degree of universality"
league table.

Greenberg's work on universals, though inadequate statistically, was first
in the field, shows remarkable insight, and has been enormously productive.

John.