XK4: David Gil: ... then I see no way to avoid the conclusion that ...

Erantzunez a Xabier Kintana (ikus XK1, XK2, XK3 eta hau ere).

Zinez, Bingfu-ren azalpena hain da ona, hain logikoa, hain naturala, non oso zaila da haren kontra egitea.

Eta evidentzia enpirikoa? Zer esan dezakegu burúz evidentzia enpirikoa? Bát al dator? Demagun hala dela, eta datu enpirikoek erakusten digutela ze hizkuntzek jotzen dute a kokatzea objetua atze aditza noiz eskakizun linguistikoak handitzen diren. Hala balitz, horrek zer esan nahiko luke? Akaso honako hau?

First a question: Is it actually the case that there's more OV>VO than VO>OV amongst ATTESTED changes, or only amongst RECONSTRUCTED changes.

If the latter, then the reason for, say, Proto-Indo-European being OV in the eyes of some historical linguists *may* (I'm only throwing this out to be provocative) be the same as the reason for, say English being OV, underlyingly, in the eyes of this or that flavour-of-the-week generative framework -- namely the product of a desire to get everything nicely lined up and serialized and pretty and elegant.

However, if the former, then I see no way to avoid the conclusion that what we have here is a fascinating window into linguistic evolution, with OV languages being evolutionarily prior to VO languages with respect to word order typology.

(An inevitable disclaimer. To say that, say, OV Japanese is evolutionarily prior to, say, VO English with respect to word order typology is not to rule out the possibility that, say, OV Japanese might be more advanced evolutionarily than VO English with respect to other linguistic properties not correlated with word order. And needless to say, such claims say nothing about extra-linguistic matters.)

David Gil [1998ko maiatzak 27]

Bai, teoria eta evidentzia sendoek bát eginen balute... [105] [⇶]