Typological Harmony Typological Harmony Joseph Greenberg in a

Typological Harmony

Typological Harmony • Joseph Greenberg, in a paper of 1963 proposed that the majority of languages do appear to have a basic word order, a ‘normal’ or ‘unmarked’ order of elements in a sentence. • In English, for example, a sentence like The Turks love backgammon represents the normal, basic order; other orders are either highly marked, like Backgammon the Turks love, or absolutely impossible, like *Love the Turks backgammon or *Backgammon love the Turks. In other words, the basic word order of English is SVO. • Assuming that basic word order is best expressed in terms of the ordering of subject, verb, and object, then there are six possible basic orders: VSO, SVO, SOV, VOS, OVS and OSV.

Typological Harmony • Such a classification according to structural features is called a typology. • A typology is only worth setting up if it proves that the languages in each group turn out to have other characteristics in common apart from the one used to set up the classification. • In this case, Greenberg was able to show that a word-order typology does indeed lead to just such an illuminating result. • He found that SOV languages in general consistently exhibit certain additional grammatical characteristics, while VSO languages, with equal consistency, exhibit precisely the opposite characteristics.

Typological Harmony • SVO languages, while slightly messier, pattern on the whole with the VSO languages, and Greenberg therefore simplified his typology into VO languages and OV languages. • The tendency of languages to conform to one type or the other is very striking, and a language that fits almost perfectly into a type is said to exhibit a high degree of typological harmony.

Typological Harmony • English provides an interesting case in point. • There is very good reason to believe that the Proto-Indo. European language, the remote ancestor of English, was very consistently SOV in its word order. • But we have no written records for it. • In the early centuries CE, a much later ancestral form of English was spoken in the north-west of the European continent. • For this we do have records in the form of a collection of inscriptions, what specialists call the North-West Germanic runic corpus.

Typological Harmony • Here a few examples: • ek Hlewagastiz Holtijaz horna tawido I H. H. horn did ‘I, H. H. , made [this] horn’ • [me]z Woduride staina prijoz dohtriz dalidun me -Dat Woduridaz-Dat stone three daughters made ‘For me, W. , three daughters made [this] stone’ • ek Wiwaz after Woduride witada-hlaiban worahto I Wiwaz after Woduridaz-Dat guard-loaf wrought ‘I W. wrought [this] for W. [the] loaf-ward [i. e. , the lord]’ • As these examples suggest, North-West Germanic was still primarily an OV language.

Typological Harmony • • But it was not completely harmonic: it had prepositions rather than postpositions, adjectives generally followed their nouns, depending upon the type of noun genitives could either precede or follow their nouns, • moreover, a small proportion of sentences (less than 20 percent) show SVO order. • The impression it gives is that of a formerly SOV language which is changing towards SVO order.

Typological Harmony • The very earliest texts in Old English, in the eighth century, are not very different in their syntax. • The following inscription is carved upon a gold ring: • Æðred me ah Eanred mec agrof Æthred me owns Eanred me carved ‘Æthred owns me; Eanred carved me’ • Soon after, however, such OV patterns become increasingly rare in Old English texts, while VO patterns become correspondingly frequent. • Within a few centuries the OV word order had virtually vanished, and English was left with the VO word order that it still has today.

Typological Harmony • Chinese has been slowly changing from SVO to SOV order over thousands of years. • Earliest records of Chinese, Archaic Chinese from the first millennium BCE, reveal a solidly VO type language. • But a transition within this record already seems to have started as for example, in NPs: adjectives, genitives and relative clauses all precede their head noun. • From the early centuries CE on a number of changes disturbed the VO patterns of the archaic language.

Typological Harmony • First, the original V + PP pattern (prepositional phrase follows verb) was replaced by a new PP + V pattern (PP precedes verb); • Second, the bă construction (discussed above) established itself, so that the original VO construction in transitive sentences was increasingly replaced by the pattern bă OV, which now predominates. • Third, the earlier passive construction, of the form Subject V by Agent, was replaced by a new construction, of the form Subject by Agent V.

Typological Harmony • Fourth, certain nouns were reduced to postpositions, an innovation in a previously exclusively prepositional language, and some of these postpositions have been phonologically reduced to something resembling casesuffixes, previously absent from the language. • Fifth, compound nouns and compound verbs, formerly very rare, have become exceedingly common in modern Chinese. • Sixth, the language has acquired a set of suffixes marking aspect on verbs (again, there is evidence that such verbal suffixes are typical of OV languages).

Typological Harmony • It is not yet possible to claim that modern Chinese is a consistent OV language but it certainly displays a level of OV characteristics as compared to its archaic ancestor. • However, it is noteworthy that a number of seemingly unrelated developments, involving a variety of forms and constructions, have all apparently been working together, with the overall effect of shifting the whole language from a VO harmonic type to an OV type. • This is an instance of what historical linguists call drift: the curious tendency of a language (and, indeed, closely related languages) to keep changing in the same direction. • Drift can be observed in every area of linguistic change.