Subject: Linguistic universals and Lojban

From: Pierre Abbat <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 02:16:27 -0500

I found a page http://ling.uni-konstanz.de:591/Universals/introduction.html 
listing universals and am trying to correlate them to Lojban. Two are:

In languages with prepositions the genitive almost always follows the 
governing noun.
In languages with postpositions the genitive almost always precedes the 
governing noun.

Lojban has prepositions, not postpositions, but it is not at all obvious to 
me what corresponds to a genitive construction. The Lojban noun cannot do 
anything but form a sumti by adding "la" (or "lai" or "la'i") or form a 
vocative phrase. It has no genitive. Most nounly things are done with verbs, 
which don't have genitive either. Both "pe"-phrases and "be"-phrases can be 
sometimes translated as a genitive, but they follow their heads. Does either 
correspond to a genitive construction?

If in a language the verb follows the nominal subject and the nominal object 
as the dominant order, the language almost always has a case system.

If by "the language has a case system" they mean that every sumti is marked 
for case, then Lojban doesn't: sumti must be marked for case only if some are 
missing or out of order. This seems to imply that the dominant order is SVO, 
not SOV. I'm not sure either of those orders dominates.

Verbal modifiers like those for negation, causation, and reflexive or 
reciprocal are placed after verb roots in OV languages and before verb roots 
in VO languages.

"na" precedes the verb, as do tense markers, unless they are followed with 
"ku". This suggests that SVO is dominant.

phma