Lehmann: the evidence of widely spoken languages

Winfred P. Lehmann hizkuntzalari famatuak eman zituén bi argudio aldéz evoluzioa on hizkuntzak aldén SVO ordena (an bere eskuliburua burúz hizkuntzalaritza historikoa titúlatzen "Historical Linguistics", 1992). Hemen jasoko dugu argudio horietarik aurrena, non Lehmann-ek egiten duén bereizketa kualitatibo bat artén hizkuntzak zein asko zabaldu diren zehar mundua, eta hizkuntzak zein gutxi zabaldu diren zehar mundua. Ikus dezagun:

The first has to do with adoption of a language by non-native speakers. When large numbers of non-native speakers adopt a language, the language tend to be shifted to SVO structure. Apparently, the basis for the shift is ease in understanding. In both VSO and SOV languages the two frequent nominal constituents of sentences, subject and object, stand side by side. In SVO languages, by contrast, they are clearly separated by the verb. We may note that all widely used languages with more than 100 million speakers today have become SVO. A number of these are Indo-European: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish. Another example is Chinese, which apparently in an early stage was verb final. The last major language to change towards SVO structure is Arabic, which is increasingly assuming SVO characteristics. An apparent counterexample is Japanese; but it has not been adopted by large numbers of speakers outside Japan. The evidence of widely spoken languages, then, supports the hypothesis that they tend towards SVO structure. If the basic sentence pattern is changed, the remaining constructions gradually change as well, as we have observed above. [Lehmann, 1992:249]

Gorago, eta mintzatuz burúz evoluzioa on hizkuntza indoeuroparra, esan dú:

Similarly, prepositions were introduced, many of them from previous postpositions. [Lehmann, 1992:249]

Euskaran ahal dugu prozesu hori erráztu edo záildu. Dá gure aukera. [127] [>>>]