From jcowan@reutershealth.com Tue Jan 16 07:50:50 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: jcowan@reutershealth.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_3_1_3); 16 Jan 2001 15:50:49 -0000 Received: (qmail 23965 invoked from network); 16 Jan 2001 15:45:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 16 Jan 2001 15:45:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail.reutershealth.com) (204.243.9.36) by mta2 with SMTP; 16 Jan 2001 15:45:01 -0000 Received: from reutershealth.com (IDENT:cowan@[192.168.3.11]) by mail.reutershealth.com (Pro-8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA04014; Tue, 16 Jan 2001 10:46:45 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <3A646BF1.5040602@reutershealth.com> Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 10:42:41 -0500 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 2.2.16-22 i686; en-US; m18) Gecko/20001107 Netscape6/6.0 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" Cc: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Some remarks from a beginner References: <4.3.2.7.2.20010113173825.00aa8110@127.0.0.1> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: John Cowan Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote: >> I mean, "focus" first, then the other parameters? > > Focus first is not the only "natural" order, just the one common in > European languages. Actually, topic-first is much more common, both in terms of the number of languages, and *especially* the number of speakers, since both English and Chinese are basically topic-first. The only focus-first language I know about offhand is Welsh. (Topic = background, focus = foreground.) -- There is / one art || John Cowan no more / no less || http://www.reutershealth.com to do / all things || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan with art- / lessness \\ -- Piet Hein