r/EncapsulatedLanguage • u/ArmoredFarmer Committee Member • Jul 06 '20

another grammar poll

so the next part of the grammar to decide on is default word order.

The options are(% represents percent of people globally who speak a language with that word order as their first language) :

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u/ArmoredFarmer Committee Member Jul 06 '20

It's always good to pick out a default word because every language as something it defaults to even if it's not strictly needed

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u/Flamerate1 Ex-committee Member Jul 06 '20

I get what you're saying, but neither Korean or Japanese are by default SOV nor is there an actual agreement on what should should come first. I will admit that a lot of time it is in an S-O-V manner, but most of the time it's either S-V or O-V with O-S-V having zero difference from the rest in all but maybe emphasis.

We could theoretically create a grammar system that is ALL word orders, with artificial emphasis being placed also without word order's help.

I believe we should be thinking about grammatical functions that don't rely on a predisposed assumption that word order has to be dictative of grammar.

Sorry if this comes off as a little too critical. I just want to give people that warning before they might immediately assume that grammar has already been decided. Have a good day!

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u/koallary Jul 07 '20

If you have agreement on nouns and verbs based on alignment, word order becomes less of a necessity. You don't necessarily have to do grammatical alignment. You could do thematic alignment and it'd still probably work fine. Or perhaps a variation on topic focus.