Timeline for Are there any languages with dominant VSO word order that DON'T switch to VOS in copular sentences?
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| Feb 11 at 23:17 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | Welsh has a fairly free word order, allowing a variety of elements to be fronted, but the base word order in ascriptive copular clauses is non-fronted VSO (whereas in identificatory copular clauses, the base order is SVO, with the subject fronted). Oddly, the opposite is true of Irish, where classificatory (= ascriptive) copular clauses have VOS, while identificatory copular clauses retain VSO. So neither splits verb and subject predicate in all circumstances, but both do it in some circumstances. | |
| Feb 11 at 20:48 | comment | added | Draconis♦ | Not an answer, but humans really do dislike decoupling V and O. According to many syntacticians, that's because O is an argument of V, and S is not. So O and V are always more closely linked in the underlying structure, and some movement has to happen to end up with S in between them. | |
| Feb 11 at 18:50 | history | asked | user43283 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |