LINGUIST List 15.418

Mon Feb 2 2004

Qs: Latin Word Order; Infant Phonemes

Editor for this issue: Naomi Fox <foxlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. George Huttar, Query: Latin word order: conjunctions and prepositions
2. Christine Virion, UG or the innateness hypothesis

In looking at some 4th century Latin poetry, my colleagues and I have 
been wondering about the freedom with which prepositions and clausal 
conjunctions both appear far from their "normal" prose positions. For 
example:

"Corde natus ex parentis" instead of the expected "ex corde...", where
the order of NP and P within the PP "ex corde" is reversed, and the
two are separated by "natus", which is not part of the PP.

For a conjunction example (from the same hymn, by Prudentius):

"virgo cum puerpera edidit nostram salutem" for "cum virgo
puerpera..." with usually clause-initial subordinating conjunction
"cum" postposed to "virgo".

My questions are whether such "movement" is limited to poetry and can
be attributed to writers' adjusting to fit the meter; and whether it
is attested in Classical Latin, or is only a later development.

I'll post a summary of responses if warranted.

George Huttar

Dear Linguists,

I am currently writing a paper dealing with the prosodical aspects of
infant-directed speech, specifically the effects of pitch on IDS. In
the background of my review I am including information about the
principle which details infants' abilities to discriminate between all
phonemes in the world's languages for up to 6-8 months. I originally
thought this was described in the UG theory, but I have been looking
over the innateness hypothesis for references to this as well. If
anyone is familiar with the exact source of this concept I would
really appreciate the clarification!