In the world, there are roughly 7,000 languages belonging to a hundred different language families. The most popular theoretical assumptions regarding word order were developed by Greenberg in 1963. His word order universals have received great interest from linguists and grammarians alike, who have been trying to account for 'cross-language word order patterns'. My question is (Can we point out that all his word order universals are applicable to all languages in the world taking into consideration that Greenberg proposed his linguistic universal based primarily on a set of 30 languages?
Dear Mohammad,
Matthew Dryer has a publication providing evidence from 625 languages that support Greenberg's claims, as well as show the lack of support for some other previous assumptions made from the small set of 30 languages.
Dryer's work at WALS.info (an amazing resource for typology), also may be helpful in finding which languages may have correlating features.
I hope this helps the discussion and your research.
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~dryer/DryerGreenbergian.PDF
http://wals.info/feature/81A#2/18.0/152.8
In a round-about way it is possible. Major languages, say within Asia or say within Southeast Asia, have similarities. Languages draw from each other. It is a dynamic process.
Dear Mohammad,
Matthew Dryer has a publication providing evidence from 625 languages that support Greenberg's claims, as well as show the lack of support for some other previous assumptions made from the small set of 30 languages.
Dryer's work at WALS.info (an amazing resource for typology), also may be helpful in finding which languages may have correlating features.
I hope this helps the discussion and your research.
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~dryer/DryerGreenbergian.PDF
http://wals.info/feature/81A#2/18.0/152.8
Dear Dr. Al-khresheh
Although it is true in many cases, there are some evidences in Persian( and other Iranian languages) that these universals are not applicable in this language.
Dear Ghadiri, I agree with you. Greenberg's universals can not be applicable to all languages. Thanks for your comment
Dear Michael Horwitsz, thanks for your contribution. Greenberg has done a great job but his universals cannot be applicable to all languages.
this model can not all inclusive due to typological categorizations of languages .
Not exactly for Classical Latin. See my co-authored chapter: Baños, J. M. & Cabrillana, C. (2009), “Orden de palabras”, in J. M. Baños (coord.), Sintaxis del latín clásico, Madrid, Liceus: 679-707. ISBN: 978-84-9822-844-1.
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