SVO and postpositions
SVO languages predominantly use prepositions. Indeed, there are notable exceptions that employ postpositions. Finnish is a prime example of an SVO language with postpositions, despite its Proto-Uralic roots suggesting a more verb-final structure. In West Africa, several Niger-Congo languages, such as those spoken in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, maintain SVO word order while using postpositions. And Guarani, an indigenous language of South America. However, I do not know any of those languages and cannot speak for them.
Using SVO with postpositions will cause excessive 之’s. The structure ‘推墙的人’ is frequent in Mandarin, where there are no postpositions and ‘的’ undergoes controversial analyses. But it is not elegant to copy the structure in Dan’a’yo as something like ‘毀滅 垣之 人’. ‘人 其 毀滅 垣’ or ‘垣 毀滅之 人’ is much better.
物灵 (talk) 02:46, 15 June 2025 (UTC)
- It's a good suggestion, but Dan'a'yo is aiming for intelligibility across CJKV. Postpositions are not common in Mandarin, but they are everywhere else. --Aquatiki (talk) 16:09, 15 June 2025 (UTC)
My mistake. I have thought there are sentences using 之 like ‘毀滅 垣之 人’ in the sample, but there are not. But should it be ‘毀滅 垣 事者’ or something else? 物灵 (talk) 07:33, 17 June 2025 (UTC)
Differences between ㅂ/ㅍ ㄷ/ㅌ ㅈ/ㅊ ㄱ/ㅋ
An old question, I know. The older Tonuao tried to remove the distinction, which supposedly proved inconvenient. I wonder how they are distinguished now. I have to summarise from existing examples,
- 冬 통, 頭 톳, 発 팓 (常用字/1): why 통 and 팓?
- 鳥 촛 (大学): seemingly omitted from modification, given 天 턴 (should be 댯 I guess — or did 촛 continue Mandarin/Xiang taboo?)
- 題 테, 反 폰 (出身論)
- 飛 피 (周南)
- 鳳 풍 (鹿鳴)
- 帝 테 (単亜語/書経/虞書/尭典)
Most 全濁 initials seem to go into ㅂ/ㄷ/ㅈ, 全清 and 次清 as expected. However I cannot find good explanations for the characters exemplified above.
物灵 (talk) 05:04, 11 November 2025 (UTC)
I guess 鳥 촛 might go after Japanese ちょう non-parallel to 天 てん, but in Dan’a’yo this seems to be expected parallel. 物灵 (talk) 02:53, 7 December 2025 (UTC)