Minhast: Difference between revisions

Minhast as a whole tends to package the obligatory elements of clauses and sentences into a cohesive unit.  Specifically, core NPs and the verbs they serve as arguments tend to be adjacent to each other. OBL arguments tend to be placed before the core NPs, so that unmarked word order is XSOV (where X stands for the OBL argument).  This observation can be verified statistically by reviewing of the corpus of texts and spoken speech, and this observation holds for almost 60%, close to one standard deviation of all text and recorded speech sampled. XOSV order is the second most common arrangement found, accounting for close to 30% of all observations.  Since the Ergative argument in transient clauses are highly salient, the XOSV order defocusses the Ergative (Agent) argument and emphasizes the Absolutive (Patient) argument.  SOXV and SXOV orders are regarded as unusual, and OSXV and OXSV orders tend to make native speakers cringe, although they will concede that those arrangements are grammatical.  These arrangements account for the remaining 10% of observations.

What is almost inviolable is the position of the verb, which prominently occurs in clause-final position.  The main reason for this restriction is most likely because the verb, being extremely suffix-laden, includes clause-linking and coordinating affixes which occur in the Postverbal Clitics slot of the Minhast verb template.  Thus, the verb serves as to mark clause boundaries and coordinate compound and complex sentences, hence the predominance of the verb's clause-final position.  Nevertheless, verbs do occur in non-final position under the following circumstances: