VSO and Master Yoda

Right, I'll simply assume that you are all Star Wars fans and know Master Yoda.

Ever notice something weird about the way he talks? The creaky voice aside I mean. Considering that he is speaking English (in a galaxy far far away ... how weird is that??) his word order is all up the spout. To put it in linguist-speak, he is using OSV word order. Which makes it sound so weird because English really is a SVO language.

OK, maybe I should elucidate on this S, V and O stuff first. All languages make utterances that contain information about who is doing what to whom, bluntly speaking. Nit-picking about Agent-Patient languages aside, the WHO bit is commonly called the subject (=S), the ACTION bit is the verb (=V) and the TO WHOM bit is the object (=O). Broadly speaking.

Take a simple English sentence: Jack is kicking Jill. Who's doing what to whom? Jack is the one who's doing the kicking, so he's the subject (= S). Kicking is the action in question, so that bit is the verb (= V). And Jill is getting muddy footprints on her new Chanel costume, so she is the object (= O) here. So, in this sentence the word order is SVO - subject first, then the verb and last the action. If you look at more English sentences, you'll see that that is the overall structure of an English sentence. Which brings us back to Master Yoda (we're not worthy, we're not worthy!). Consider his ominous revelation to Luke Skywalker: "Your father he is". Hm ... here we start with the object first, followed by the subject and then by the verb at the end. OSV. While not all his sentences follow this strict structure, a lot of them do and that is what makes him sound so odd.

Now, for a bit of linguistic trivia. We've determined that languages beg to differ as to their word order. So, how many different combinations of S, O and V does that give us? Yup, six: SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OSV and OVS. By far, the most common two are actually SVO & SOV which are used by roughly 75% of the world's languages, including English. Another 15% or so use VSO and the remaining three make up about 10% of the world's languages. Bet you're dying for some examples, so I'll try not to disappoint you.

SVO

English

Jack S

kicks V

Jill O

Vietnamese

Bích S Bích	ăn V eat	cơm O rice
Bích eats rice

Haussa

bā yā NEG S not he	cîn V eat	nāmā O meat
he doesn't eat meat

SOV

Chechen	as S I	Gürzhiini motta O Georgian language	büütsa V speak
	I speak Georgian
Tongan	kuo u PAST S I	sio V see	he kulī O the dog
	I have seen the dog

SVO

Japanese	Ryōko wa S TOPIC Ryōko	terebi o O DAT television	mimasu V watch
	Ryoko watches TV

VSO

Welsh	mae V be	dwy ferch S two girl	gyda fi O with I
	I have two daughters
Cebuano	adúna V have	siyáy S she	duhá ka anák two COUNT child
	she has two children
Irish	phóg V PAST-kiss	sé S he	an madra O the dog
	he kissed the dog

VOS

Malagasy	manana V have	akondra O banana	aho S I
	I have a banana
Tzotzil	lá snákan PAST seat	ti vĩnike THEME man	yu'un ti xpétule AG S Peter
	Peter seated the man

OSV

Apurinã	anana O pineapple	nota S I	apa V fetch
	I fetch a pineapple
Amharic	shay O tea	yït'at'all S-V he-drinking
	he's drinking the tea
Yanomami	rorõ O cigarette	ya kona S INC I	taarema V see
	I see a cigarette

OVS

Hixkaryana	toto O the fish	yonoye V ate	kana S the man
	the man ate the fish
Xavante	ma PAST	wĩrĩ O-V him kill	ni S someone
	someone killed him

So what?

Wonderful, but where does that leave us? Well, from the above Irish example, some of you may have already guessed that Gaelic falls into the select category of VSO languages. And it's quite strict about that - which is lucky for us.

Practically speaking, this means that no matter what bits come in between, the verb comes before the subject, and the subject before the object. Let's look at a few examples:

bidh V	mi S	ag ithe ùbhlan O (technically a predicate)	a-màireach, a bhalaich blabla
chunnaic V	mo mhàthair S	cù O	aig an doras O/Predicate
bhiodh V	m' athair S	ag obair air càraichean O/Predicate	nuair a bha mi òg blabla

So, why did I say "quite strict"? Because there's a select group of particles that can come before the verb: interrogative particles, past tense markers, negative particles, and others. Here's a list of particles which can commonly come before the verb and a few examples:

Sentence Initial
an/nach	an deach thu
cha(n)	cha tuig thu
có, càite, cuin, carson...	cuine a bhios tu
ma, nan	nan digeadh tu
Phrase Initial
far an, nuair a	... nuair a bha mi
gun	... gun robh e
có, càite, cuin, carson...	cuine a bhios tu
ma, nan	nan digeadh tu

So your average sentence will look like this:

For example:

am Pre-verbial particle	bi V	mi S	ag ithe ùbhlan a-màireach, a bhalaich? Predicate (aka the rest)
ø Pre-verbial particle	chunnaic V	mo mhàthair S	cù aig an doras Predicate (aka the rest)
dh' Pre-verbial particle	fhàg V	mo mhàthair S	cù aig an doras Predicate (aka the rest)
cha Pre-verbial particle	bhiodh V	m' athair S	ag obair air càraichean nuair a bha mi òg Predicate (aka the rest)

Chunnaic is in the list because there is one of those famous linguistic zeroes (= ø)in front of it. A linguistic zero is a marker for a something that used-to-be-there/would-occupy-this-position-if-it-were-marked. In Old Irish, the past tense was quite regularly marked by sticking a particle in front of the verb (don't ask, it was messy). Curiously, one dialect of Irish still preserves this paradigm and that dialect also has a largely synthetic verb structure, meaning it uses endings as opposed to individual words to designate the subject pronouns:

Munster Irish	Standard Irish	Scottish Gaelic
do dhúnas do dhúnais do dhún sé/sí do dhúnamair do dhúnabhair do dhúnadar	dhún mé dhún tú dhún sé/sí dhún muid dhún sibh dhún siad	dhùn mi dhùn thu dhùn e/i dhùn sinn dhùn sibh dhùn iad

That's why chunnaic is in the list. In Irish, the do then got reduced to d' before vowels and f (e.g. d'ith mé) and in Scottish Gaelic it became dh' (e.g. dh'ith mi). Anyway, it doesn't really matter if you ignore this particular one.

It certainly gets more complicated than that. But for now, it will do nicely to remember that Gaelic is a VSO language. Watch this space as there is lots more on syntax to come, including a lovely tree diagram even though we're definitely not generativists.