# Word order in pidgins and creoles



## Dymn

Hi,

Do pidgins and creoles tend to have a specific word order that differs from their component languages, both the lexifier and the (previous) mother tongue of the population? This atlas shows an overwhelming preference for SVO order, but the problem is most of these languages are based on European languages which already display SVO, so it's not that informative.

I recall reading about a pidgin between two SOV languages that was SVO, but I've completely forgot what was it. Somewhere in Central Asia maybe?

Thank you


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## Sobakus

I read about it in this fascinating article a while back: _Langus A. & Nespor M. (2015). On the nature of word order regularities,_ particularly page 148+. It seems that SVO is indeed the predominant word order in creoles, even those that arose from other configurations. The example they give is Berbice Dutch Creole, whose lexifier languages are the SOV Dutch and Ijo, and their overall contention is that the SVO order is preferred, or even fixed, by our computational cognitive system, and is thus the default word order for natural languages; while SOV is preferred (or fixed) by the direct interaction of the sensory-motor and the conceptual systems, and requires intonational queues (phrase-initial pitch accent) in order to be set by the learner. Fascinating as this proposal is, the generalisation seems to be based on just that one creole and further examples are needed for there to be any degree of certainty.


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## Red Arrow

Dutch is a V2-language: the conjugated verb always comes second, but other verbs come last. For instance, in the present tense, SVO is very common.


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## Sobakus

Red Arrow said:


> Dutch is a V2-language: the conjugated verb always comes second, but other verbs come last. For instance, in the present tense, SVO is very common.


In modern generative grammar frameworks V2 is the surface, derived word order resulting from a syntactic movement rule, just like wh-movement (It is _where_? > _Where_ is it?). The basic underlying word order is SOV, as seen in subordinate clauses where no movement applies. Other verbs coming last in main clauses shows us the original location of the verbal phrase before it gets broken up via movement of the conjugated verb.


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## Awwal12

The verb separating the subject and the object provides clear parsing benefits in languages with poor morphology. And since the subject tends to be more important pragmatically, SVO is preferable to OVS. Nothing looks really surprising.


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## Dymn

Well I don't know much about formal linguistics but it seems weird to me to call Dutch an SOV language without clarifying it. Clearly if in Berbice Creole they say "The cat chases the mouse" it could be a takeover from the equivalent Dutch structure, although I also think it's the most preferrable arrangement as @Awwal12 says. I guess that's also why both Romance languages and Arabic dialects have moved away from SOV/VSO to SVO once they have lost grammatical cases.


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## Welsh_Sion

I guess that's also why both Romance languages and Arabic dialects have moved away from SOV/VSO to SVO once they have lost grammatical cases.

_________

I'm not a philologist nor a specialist in any way of Romance and Arabic languages, but I'd like to know why we (the Celtic languages) have 'retained' VSO as the sentence order of choice, despite also losing grammatical cases. (There is what I term a 'fossilised vocative' in Cymraeg/Welsh, which is identified by Soft Mutation.)

Perhaps my question applies in another thread, but I'm just raising it with @Dymn.


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## Red Arrow

Dymn said:


> Well I don't know much about formal linguistics but it seems weird to me to call Dutch an SOV language without clarifying it. Clearly if in Berbice Creole they say "The cat chases the mouse" it could be a takeover from the equivalent Dutch structure, although I also think it's the most preferrable arrangement as Awwal12 says.


Exactly. Both are equally likely explanations. Dutch is V2 in main clauses and SOV in subordinate clauses. Why would Berbice Creole's sentence structure mimick that of subordinate clauses in Dutch? It doesn't make any sense.

Present tense and simple past in main clauses:
*SVO* (Je drinkt soep = You drink soup), *VSO* (Morgen drink je soep = Tomorrow drink you soup) or rarely *OVS* (Soep drink je = Soup drink you)

Other tenses in main clauses:
*SV1OV2* (Je zal soep drinken = You will soup drink), *V1SOV2* (Morgen zal je soep drinken = Tomorrow will you soup drink) or rarely *OV1SV2* (Soep zal je drinken = Soup will you drink)

In a main clause, the conjugated verb never comes at the end. It always comes in second place.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> And since the subject tends to be more important pragmatically, SVO is preferable to OVS.


The subject is usually the topic, which is the old and less important information, and the object the comment, which is the new and more important information. Thus it's the comment that's universally associated with phrasal/sentence stress (the head of the prosodic phrase called _nuclear accent)._ A result of this is that initial nuclear stress (trochaic) languages like Hungarian and Turkish usually have OV word order, and final nuclear stress (iambic) languages like Italian and Russian VO order.


Awwal12 said:


> The verb separating the subject and the object provides clear parsing benefits in languages with poor morphology.


Crosslinguistic studies do find a good correlation between SVO and lack of subject/object case marking.


Dymn said:


> Well I don't know much about formal linguistics but it seems weird to me to call Dutch an SOV language without clarifying it. Clearly if in Berbice Creole they say "The cat chases the mouse" it could be a takeover from the equivalent Dutch structure





Red Arrow said:


> Exactly. Both are equally likely explanations. Dutch is V2 in main clauses and SOV in subordinate clauses. Why would Berbice Creole's sentence structure mimick that of subordinate clauses in Dutch? It doesn't make any sense.
> 
> Present tense and simple past in main clauses:
> *SVO* (Je drinkt soep = You drink soup), *VSO* (Morgen drink je soep = Tomorrow drink you soup) or rarely *OVS* (Soep drink je = Soup drink you)
> 
> Other tenses in main clauses:
> *SV1OV2* (Je zal soep drinken = You will soup drink), *V1SOV2* (Morgen zal je soep drinken = Tomorrow will you soup drink) or rarely *OV1SV2* (Soep zal je drinken = Soup will you drink)
> 
> In a main clause, the conjugated verb never comes at the end. It always comes in second place.


Basic word order typology doesn't mean that other words orders don't regularly occur. It's simply the common denominator before any further movement rules apply. Most possible word order permutations occur frequently in Russian. Likewise, classifying Berbice Creole as SVO doesn't imply that other word orders don't occur in it.

SOV is the only one common denominator that the various surface word orders of Dutch can be reduced to. Deriving them from SVO is plainly impossible - the inflected verb doesn't follow the subject, but any constituent that comes first. The object preceding the verb whenever the latter is _not_ inflected cannot be explained from SVO. In order to correctly learn to construct any Dutch sentence, the learner has to acquire SOV as the basic order and a number of additional rules such as inflected V2, subject-verb inversion in questions, wh-movement, fronting for topicalisation and/or focussing etc. All of these result in different surface word orders and there's no apparent reason that a Dutch-based creole should mimick any of them instead of the simplest, most basic underlying configuration that preceeds any additional rules.

More importantly, unlike almost all other animals human language learners don't just mimick - in fact most humans simply can't mimick, as any language teacher knows. They derive (or transfer, or extend) rules and then apply them in their own output. This is clearly seen in studies of acquisition - a very accessible article illustrates.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> A result of this is that initial nuclear stress (trochaic) languages like Hungarian and Turkish usually have OV word order, and final nuclear stress (iambic) languages like Italian and Russian VO order.


Except SO order (VSO, SVO or SOV) is still absolutely predominant over OS (and we were comparing those two, basically).


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## Red Arrow

Sobakus said:


> SOV is the only one common denominator that the various surface word orders of Dutch can be reduced to. Deriving them from SVO is plainly impossible - the inflected verb doesn't follow the subject, but any constituent that comes first.


True, but Dutch main clauses have three important rules:
1) The inflected verb *always* goes second.
2) The subject *always* goes first or third.
3) Past participles and infinitives go last.

In other words, the subject is always right next to the inflected verb.

When the subject goes first, anything can come first: an adverb, a direct object, an indirect object, even an entire subordinate clause. But the inflected verb and the subject are always together.


			
				Sobakus said:
			
		

> The object preceding the verb whenever the latter is _not_ inflected cannot be explained from SVO.


Similarly, SOV cannot explain any basic sentence: Ik ben Sobakus, ik eet brood, jij lust geen brood, ik zie jullie, ik at iedere dag een appel... The terms SVO, SOV and OVS are all not adequate to describe Dutch.

Calling Dutch anything other than V2 in the main clause and SOV in the subordinate clause is dishonest.

You call Dutch SOV because uninflected verbs come last in the main clause and inflected verbs come last in subordinate clauses, but that is very misleading because inflected and uninflected verbs are separate _zinsdelen _(parts of the sentence).



			
				Sobakus said:
			
		

> There's no apparent reason that a Dutch-based creole should mimick any of them instead of the simplest, most basic underlying configuration that preceeds any additional rules.


This is Dymn's argument and differs from what you said in your first post.


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## myšlenka

Red Arrow said:


> True, but Dutch main clauses have three important rules:
> 1) The inflected verb *always* goes second.
> 2) The subject *always* goes first or third.
> 3) Past participles and infinitives go last.
> 
> In other words, the subject is always right next to the inflected verb.
> 
> When the subject goes first, anything can come first: an adverb, a direct object, an indirect object, even an entire subordinate clause. But the inflected verb and the subject are always together.
> 
> Similarly, SOV cannot explain any basic sentence: Ik ben Sobakus, ik eet brood, jij lust geen brood, ik zie jullie, ik at iedere dag een appel... The terms SVO, SOV and OVS are all not adequate to describe Dutch.


When it comes to the typology of word order, the constituent that is labelled V refers to the _lexical_ verb (or the main verb if you want). Auxiliaries and other light verbs are excluded from studies on the order of S, V and O. However, they participate in the Germanic V2 requirement where inflection comes into play, but that is a separate issue.


Red Arrow said:


> Calling Dutch anything other than V2 in the main clause and SOV in the subordinate clause is dishonest.


I think the point you are missing here is that there is a difference between underlying basic word order and surface word order. The general consensus among people working on the syntax of Dutch is that the underlying basic word order is SOV. However, no one will deny that the surface order in main clauses and subordinate clauses is V2 and SOV respectively, so there is no dishonesty. You may of course disagree with the view that there is a need for an underlying word order, but it seems to me that you haven't understood what the nature of the claim is.


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## Ellis91

Just to add to what's been said about Dutch word order. It is obvious that the verb phrase marker is OV. Even the youngest child growing up in a Dutch speaking environment would answer the question _Wat wil je doen?_ with _brood eten _and never _eten brood_.


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## Swatters

Ellis91 said:


> Just to add to what's been said about Dutch word order. It is obvious that the verb phrase marker is OV. Even the youngest child growing up in a Dutch speak environment would answer the question _Wat wil je doen?_ with _brood eten _and never _eten brood_.


And in case anyone is thinking that "brood eten" may be a clipping of "ik wil brood eten", the same syntax appears in copular sentences like "*voetbal kijken* is mijn enige vorm van ontspanning" ((to) football watch is my only form of entertainment), where no such analysis is possible.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> Except SO order (VSO, SVO or SOV) is still absolutely predominant over OS (and we were comparing those two, basically).


Yes, this reflects the topic-comment structure where the more important Object-comment follows the less important Subject-topic. You suggested that it was the Subject that was more important.


Red Arrow said:


> Similarly, SOV cannot explain any basic sentence: Ik ben Sobakus, ik eet brood, jij lust geen brood, ik zie jullie, ik at iedere dag een appel... The terms SVO, SOV and OVS are all not adequate to describe Dutch.


The explanation is syntactic movement, a concept that I've made reference to in every reply here. Please make sure you understand what is meant by this by exploring some google results. V2 is one of several movement rules that act on the underlying word order. The resulting surface, derived word orders cannot be used to argue against the basic, underlying order that they're derived from.


Red Arrow said:


> Sobakus said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There's no apparent reason that a Dutch-based creole should mimick any of them instead of the simplest, most basic underlying configuration that preceeds any additional rules.
> 
> 
> 
> This is Dymn's argument and differs from what you said in your first post.
Click to expand...

The underlying configuration that preceeds any additional rules in Dutch is SOV. Dymn's argument is that the derived inflected-V2 order should be mimicked by creole speakers, which I don't think should be expected. Typology is based on the underlying word order, which is SOV in Dutch and Ijo, and SVO in Berbice Creole. All of them may display various derived word orders.


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## S.V.

Dymn said:


> Romance... Arabic


Though as a sort of_ opposite_ ('rich morphology', an 'efficient' plural &_c_), out of centuries of 'strain' (21), you might have 'solved' that & other issues with_ duplicación_. So for every fifth SVO sentence in Brazil, we say_ el resto lo paga el pueblo_, _el bacalao lo metía en medio de las piernas_, _a México el diablo lo castiga con mucha bronca_, etc. (EN; _el *o lo_ in CORPES; +Subcorpus > Oral).


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## Sobakus

S.V. said:


> Though as a sort of_ opposite_ ('rich morphology', an 'efficient' plural &_c_), out of centuries of 'strain' (21), you might have 'solved' that & other issues with_ duplicación_. So for every fifth SVO sentence in Brazil, we say_ el resto lo paga el pueblo_, _el bacalao lo metía en medio de las piernas_, _a México el diablo lo castiga con mucha bronca_, etc. (EN; _el *o lo_ in CORPES; +Subcorpus > Oral).


The technical term for this is _Clitic-Left Dislocation_: the object is topicalised via movement to the left periphery of the clause, and is repeated with a resumptive clitic pronoun. This is very common in Romance but sounds peculiar and forgetful to us Russians  In some varieties indirect/prepositional objects are also picked up by a pronoun, but in most it seems to be optional.

There's also _Clitic-Right Dislocation,_ especially widespread in Italian: *L*_’ho già comprato, il giornale = I've already bought *it,* the journal._ Russian typically attaches the topic-marking particle _-то_ to the dislocated noun in such instances, which is pronominal in origin (it's declined in some dialects, if they still survive that is), so we have a double-clitic construction here! This use is much more emphatic than in Italian.

Here's the rarest and most peculiar one, _Loose Aboutness Left Dislocation_, found in French (where else? ): _*Moi* la bicyclette, je n’aime pas fatiguer = *Me* the bicycle, I don't like to tire myself._ That just sounds like a child's painting to us xD


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## Dymn

Sobakus said:


> Dymn's argument is that the derived inflected-V2 order should be mimicked by creole speakers, which I don't think should be expected. Typology is based on the underlying word order, which is SOV in Dutch and Ijo, and SVO in Berbice Creole. All of them may display various derived word orders.


Well isn't it likely that if their knowledge of Dutch is deficient they are more familiar with the word order in basic sentences with SVO, rather than the one in more complex structures like subordinate clauses or OV infinitives, regardless of which one is the underlying order? (A concept which admittedly I didn't know before this thread, I will have to catch up on syntax).



Sobakus said:


> Crosslinguistic studies do find a good correlation between SVO and lack of subject/object case marking.


Thanks, that's interesting and was the motivation for my question actually. My ultimate goal was to know if SVO is somehow the most "natural" arrangement, but probably that question would be nonsensical.



S.V. said:


> Though as a sort of_ opposite_ ('rich morphology', an 'efficient' plural &_c_), out of centuries of 'strain' (21), you might have 'solved' that & other issues with_ duplicación_. So for every fifth SVO sentence in Brazil, we say_ el resto lo paga el pueblo_, _el bacalao lo metía en medio de las piernas_, _a México el diablo lo castiga con mucha bronca_, etc. (EN; _el *o lo_ in CORPES; +Subcorpus > Oral).


I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean. Are you implying those structures may be an influence from Arabic? None of these are VSO (or even SO) as far as I can tell.


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## Ellis91

Dymn said:


> Well isn't it likely that if their knowledge of Dutch is deficient they are more familiar with the word order in basic sentences with SVO, rather than the one in more complex structures like subordinate clauses or OV infinitives, regardless of which one is the underlying order? (A concept which admittedly I didn't know before this thread, I will have to catch up on syntax).


I agree with this. In a situation where a pidgin is used for communication, simple non-embedded clauses would be the most used, possibly exclusively. And in such a case, the underlying "deep" structure would be invisible in the case of a Dutch based pidgin, and it would therefore be expected that a creole based on it would be SVO, which is superficially the case in the most simple Dutch sentences.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> Yes, this reflects the topic-comment structure where the more important Object-comment follows the less important Subject-topic.


Isn't it counter-intuitive?  I argue that, first, the topic isn't really less important on the level of speech (since it's virtually impossible to build cohesive speech without topics), and, second, that the subject is more important semantically (as it's by definition predominantly agentive - which is exactly the reason why it tends to appear as the topic in the first place).


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## S.V.

Sobakus said:


> sounds peculiar and forgetful to us Russians


Ha, it is curious how many sound _natural_ in Spanish, but _stiff _or _broken_ in BR Portuguese ("_BVP_ usually preserves SVO";_ Vernacular_). I've mentioned Riiho 2011 before ("_disponen de recursos especiales_"; EN). Coming back to the Old PT examples with a different ear, it's also a bigger contrast with some 'modern' objects in Brazil (from _"Tive um coração, perdi-o"_ to _perdi ele_,_ não vi __ela_ &c). Then linked to this discussion, the "imperfect language shift" in Mello, without saying _Yoruba, Bantu langs_... 'caused' SVO. 

"Influence from Arabic" tampoco lo diría (˚[that] _neither it __say-would-I_). If _it is only stress _& _the stopping of stress_, we say 'VSO by 13th c.' & understand this 'parsing' stress during the gestating centuries (←XI_ Toledo - Sevilla_ XIII→), _*along*_ other VO & OV orders, as in Riiho. Then a parallel, in basic verbs 'pushing' others along & examples like _todo__ ge lo dize_ in _Mio Cid_. If the 'language' cortex also works in clusters (a 'berry' bush for _ama_, _amas_, _aman_... _canta, cantas, cantan_ &c), at this time you have already inherited Latin's 'merged' marks. As in
　　　/o/
　　　　　　+/s/
　　　/a/
being able to 'stand' for each other: _el gato, el negro, no lo veo_;_ the cat, ˚the black, ˚not it see-I_. Just as we'd say a kid learns _yo_ in _veo, tengo_, _nos_ in _vemos_, _tenemos_ ('I have', 'we have'). That pron. /o/ then assimilated, its 'freer' position (2; a stressed _lo_, '_[eso] por bien toviéssedes_') likely helped our _duplicación_. But in pt-BR it sounds as though pron. /o/ (_não o vejo_ → _não vejo ele_) is more 'taxing' to identify. As if that single_ l-_ was enough to keep ES _lo_ from merging into previous vowels (_não o_, _no lo_) or ff. verb stems (_lo vi _'I saw it',_ o vi _→ _ouvi_?). Along article /o/ (_perdi o sono_), more dropped objects (& 'Latin' answers: ˚_Do you have them?_ "_Tenho"_16), and SVO. With a _você_ for every_ tú_ dropped in ES.  As you 'merge' 2nd & 3rd: _você, ela, ele ama_ → "_Quem é você, Charlie Brown?_" ("_Quem és tu, Charlie Brown?_", "_¿Quién eres, Charlie Brown?_").


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## Sobakus

Dymn said:


> Well isn't it likely that if their knowledge of Dutch is deficient they are more familiar with the word order in basic sentences with SVO, rather than the one in more complex structures like subordinate clauses or OV infinitives, regardless of which one is the underlying order? (A concept which admittedly I didn't know before this thread, I will have to catch up on syntax).


As I say above, I don't see good reasons to assume this, here's why. I haven't been able to find proper studies of word order frequencies in Dutch, but one study came up with a figure of about 50% for SVO (in informal letters), while Levshina (2021) here comes up with a little under 50% for what seems like SVO+OVS combined (she says "verb medial") in online news corpora (counting finite main and subordinate clauses with a lexical verbal predicate). Now imagine a learner adopting the hypothesis that Dutch is an SVO language. Quite clearly this theory will be proven wrong 2 to 3 times in 4 clauses (assuming an even split between SVO and OVS) - and that's in non-interactive texts! Typical everyday speech involves a large proportion of questions, which will tank the proportion of SVO sentences even further. Tellingly, Afrikaans, which is another Dutch creole, is SOV+V2 like Dutch.

Now, ostensibly one would want to find data on how children and L2 learners acquire the Dutch word-order. But there's a major complication here - we're dealing with a creole, which results from a pidgin, which represents atypical acquisition. This is an area I'm quite clueless in and so can't offer any insights. From where I'm looking it just seems that creoles default to SVO (while pidgins lack describable grammar by their nature) and that a universal, biologically conditioned factor is at play.

But! There are other studies that conclude that SOV was the original word order in the human proto-language, supporting it with an observation that SOV > SVO is universally unidirectional. Significantly, this is consistent with the assumption that the human proto-language originated from a sign-based communication system, which defaults to SOV (message #2).


Dymn said:


> Thanks, that's interesting and was the motivation for my question actually. My ultimate goal was to know if SVO is somehow the most "natural" arrangement, but probably that question would be nonsensical.


It's anything but nonsensical! Langus & Nespor's article linked in message #2 argues precisely this, though the naturalness is limited to a particular cognitive system. A study by Aronoff et al. (2005) finds that:


> _It is precisely because sign languages can develop these motivated associations between form and meaning so readily that they differ from young spoken languages in having overt inflection._


Combined with Levshina's study that finds that _"languages without distinctive case marking tend to have SVO"_ (with further support cited), this seems to account for the observation that creoles, with their typical absence of said marking, are predominantly or exclusively SVO - though again, this, and especially its cognitive basis, needs to be further investigated.


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## S.V.

The Berbice text feels like that familiar 'everything can be a verb or a noun' from a Germanic grandson. While the Chabacano audios (yellow on Philippines; 44, 45, 46; s) further merge our marks, without losing them completely.
_　(tá)_*-*_so_-_li_-_d*á*_ 'this is a verb' → _ta platiká ele, jo ta sintá _(˚_did speak she ˚I was sit_
　　INF_ platicár_, _sentár_ merged with '2nd-hand' _˚[əs]ta platicá[ndo], ta[ba] sintá[do]_ 'is talking', 'was sitting' &c)
　"el"+ _sa_-_do_(u) / "el"+ _so_-_da_ 'this is a noun &c' → _Sigisígi komígo kel pábo_ in 45, _˚follo-follow with-me that turkey-o_.
I would not ask for a hundred IT/ES creoles ("_respect for the rights of others_"), but I imagine other non-SVO 'targets' could have also behaved like Chabacano. Once the Latin marks are there, _Ta hugá jo ~ Jo ta sintá_ (45) are not that different. What they mean by 'poor morphology', instead of a garden full of berries, a big SVO tree, and everything goes in there ('sure, _toot_ & _mu __mu_ can be verbs' ).


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## Red Arrow

Sobakus said:


> Tellingly, Afrikaans, which is another Dutch creole, is SOV+V2 like Dutch.


Afrikaans is not a creole. Not only are the word order rules exactly the same as in Dutch, all other grammar is also very similar to Dutch. Some of the grammar changed, but these are all changes that also happened in other Germanic languages. Some linguists claim that Afrikaans results from a merger between a Dutch creole and "proper" cape Dutch.


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## Sobakus

Red Arrow said:


> Afrikaans is not a creole. Not only are the word order rules exactly the same as in Dutch, all other grammar is also very similar to Dutch. Some of the grammar changed, but these are all changes that also happened in other Germanic languages. Some linguists claim that Afrikaans results from a merger between a Dutch creole and "proper" cape Dutch.


It's not a creole in the classical sense of a pidgin becoming a full-fledged language. However, it's obviously undergone a degree of creolisation/pidginisation. Trudgill (whom this thread inspired me to read) calls it a creoloid. English would qualify for this description as well, by the way, and it may have undergone this process twice - first with early medieval Brittonic, then with Old Norse 4 to 6 centuries later, not to mention all the dialect mixing.


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## Dymn

Sobakus said:


> From where I'm looking it just seems that creoles default to SVO (while pidgins lack describable grammar by their nature) and that a universal, biologically conditioned factor is at play.


That's interesting. I also think most creoles including Berbice are SVO because it's somehow more natural in a way, although I still don't see how Dutch influence can be entirely ruled out. However I don't think the grammar of the lexifier language has a lot of influence on creoles, does it?



Sobakus said:


> Now imagine a learner adopting the hypothesis that Dutch is an SVO language. Quite clearly this theory will be proven wrong 2 to 3 times in 4 clauses (assuming an even split between SVO and OVS) - and that's in non-interactive texts!


Well, main clauses are easier to parse so maybe they learn them earlier, it's not entirely down to frequency. I can imagine the first Dutch class the teacher would teach the students a sentence like "_De vrouw eet een appel._", before going into questions or subordinate clauses.

This reminds me of Portuguese, in which the weak pronoun goes after the verb in simple sentences, but probably if you add up all of the "exceptions" it's placed before the verb most of the time.



Sobakus said:


> But! There are other studies that conclude that SOV was the original word order in the human proto-language, supporting it with an observation that SOV > SVO is universally unidirectional. Significantly, this is consistent with the assumption that the human proto-language originated from a sign-based communication system, which defaults to SOV (message #2).


That's really interesting. How far back would we have to go to reach that human proto-language? Is there really no example of a language going from SVO to SOV? Or straying away from SVO to another order?


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## Ghabi

Dymn said:


> That's interesting. I also think most creoles including Berbice are SVO because it's somehow more natural in a way


This is a fascinating topic. I remember reading Derek Bickerton's book _Bastard Tongues_ years ago, and if I remember correctly, the basic question the book raises is: if so many unrelated creoles share so many very similar features, then should we assume that these features are natural to us? (I think he also proposes some kind of Psammetichus experiment.)


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## Awwal12

Ghabi said:


> then should we assume that these features are natural to us?


Basically, all features of human languages are natural to us. However, a language is not a set of random features but a functioning system where most of the features are interconnected. Creoles are special because they arise from idioms which have very limited vocabularies and which have lost all the inflectional morphology. To remain an efficient tool of communication, they must react to those very specific initial conditions, and it's no wonder they react in a similar fashion.


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