Timeline for Does word order really not matter in Latin?
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| Feb 4, 2015 at 1:02 | comment | added | TKR | It's not completely true that "the free word order in those languages that allow it, functions within a clause or a predicative word-group and words from one clause or group aren't inserted into another one". At least in Greek (probably also in Latin but I don't have an example handy), it's sometimes possible for words to float up out of a dependent clause into a matrix clause where they don't belong semantically. These are usually clitics, which tend to gravitate to the early parts of the sentence. | |
| Sep 26, 2014 at 14:19 | comment | added | Colin Fine | @Icehenge. Indeed. Joseph Emonds proposal for the grammar of what he called "Normal Usage" (NU - as opposed to "Prestige Usage") is: "The subject pronouns I, we, he, she, and they are used as a noun phrase (NP) if and only if the phrase is an immediate constituent of a sentence (S) which contains an inflected verbal element." This does not allow "Me went" (which no native speaker says) but does allow "Me and Jim went" (which many native speakers say). His paper is here | |
| Sep 26, 2014 at 12:25 | comment | added | icehenge | @ColinFine I would suggestion that we do away with the inflection all together. The youngsters would love this: "Me and my friends are ..." | |
| Sep 26, 2014 at 12:21 | comment | added | icehenge | @YellowSky - Finally 18 points. My upvote as promised. Hope this thread helps dispel the myth that "word order doesn't matter in Latin". Still not enough points for chat :( SE should weight the points by the number of users!!! Btw, I am looking into this language now: Lojban. Seems to have a very promising syntax. | |
| Sep 24, 2014 at 17:21 | comment | added | Colin Fine | By the way, @Icehenge, if you want to satisfy the pedants you can pretend that English is Latin and say It is I. People who speak English and don't care about pretending it is Latin have been happily saying It is me for centuries. | |
| Sep 24, 2014 at 16:11 | comment | added | Yellow Sky | @icehenge - Glad to help you. When you have more reputation points, we can move this discussion to chat, if you wish. | |
| Sep 24, 2014 at 15:48 | comment | added | icehenge | Got it. Thanks for the informative discussion (what I shall call speedy Latin expert training). Wish I could upvote. Will come back when I have 15 points :) | |
| Sep 24, 2014 at 15:37 | vote | accept | icehenge | ||
| Sep 24, 2014 at 15:10 | comment | added | Yellow Sky | @icehenge - No again. Since "to visit" is a transitive verb, its direct object, "my best friend" will be in the accusative in Latin. And "visiting" is the present participle, not the gerund. ^_^ Anyhow, all the objects of "visiting" belong to a different predicative word-group, see your second comment here. | |
| Sep 24, 2014 at 15:10 | comment | added | icehenge | Should be *accusative instead of nominative in my last comment. What was I thinking ... | |
| Sep 24, 2014 at 14:57 | comment | added | icehenge | Again please forgive my impatience. Should have learned some Latin before asking this question here. Just for the sake of discussion, assume the genders are the same, and focus on the first part of the sentence to avoid the purpose clause (thanks for mentioning it, googling in progress). "my best friend" is the object of the gerund "visiting" and if I understand it correctly, is nominative. So is "my bike". Is there any syntactic trick I can use to indicate "best" modifies "friend" instead of "bike" even if I put it somewhere else? | |
| Sep 24, 2014 at 14:46 | comment | added | Yellow Sky | @icehenge - I should say your example about the bike and the apple is very unsuitable for this discussion. First, in Latin 'bike' and 'apple' are of different genders, and second, in Latin that sentence is compound, so 'bike' and 'apple' are in different clauses ("I ride my bike so that I buy an apple). Google "Latin purpose clauses" to learn about that. | |
| Sep 24, 2014 at 14:19 | comment | added | icehenge | Just googled around and found "predicate nominative". I guess I need to relearn my English grammar as well. Next time when someone asks "who is it?" I will say "it is I" ;) Thanks for the wonderful example! Going back to my original question, I guess (trying again) the answer is "you can move the adjectives around, as long there is no ambiguity"? So there is no way for me to indicate syntactically (ie. by inflecting it in a certain way) that the adjective "green" modifies "apple" so that people can tell even if I put it in front of "bike"? | |
| Sep 24, 2014 at 13:47 | comment | added | Yellow Sky | @icehenge - Sorry, but your guess is wrong, inside a clause, especially in Latin poetry, it's a usual thing to separate an adjective or a genitive from the words they modify, like "Beautiful (nom. pl.) were sitting near the river girls (nom. pl.)". As for amicus, it's a predicative in that sentence, and predicatives in Latin are always in the nominative case, the accusative case is used mostly after transitive verbs, after some prepositions, and in some constructions, every Latin grammar describes when each case must be used. | |
| Sep 24, 2014 at 13:24 | comment | added | icehenge | So "free word order in those languages that allow it, functions within a clause or a predicative word-group". Got it!! As to the second part of my question, I guess the answer is "the adjectives should always stay with the nouns they modify"? Same for the genitives? And a new question about your answer: why is amicus not accusative (amīcum instead of amīcus)? | |
| Sep 24, 2014 at 12:44 | history | answered | Yellow Sky | CC BY-SA 3.0 |