Universal 964: VO ⇒ Art N;
OV ⇒ N Art
- Original
- VO languages exhibit a statistically greater tendency to place articles before the noun than OV languages do.
To the opposite, the tendency to place the noun before the articles is higher among OV languages than it is among VO languages. - Standardized
- IF basic order is VO, THEN the article precedes the noun.
IF basic order is OV, THEN the article follows the noun. - Keywords
- order, verb, object, article, noun
- Domain
- syntax
- Type
- implication
- Status
- achronic
- Quality
- statistical
- Basis
- sample of 125 languages in Dryer 1989a; sample of 543 languages in Dryer 1992
- Source
- Dryer 1986: 100; Dryer 1989a: 88; Dryer 1992: 103-104
- Counterexamples
- In Dryer’s sample, African VO languages exhibit a preference for N Art order. Eurasian and South American OV languages prefer Art N order.
1. There is a statistically significant correlation between the order of article and noun and the order of object and verb. The direction of this correlation, however, is the opposite of what traditional assumptions might lead us to expect. If one adopts the traditional assumption that articles are modifiers of nouns and the common view that modifiers tend to precede the noun in OV languages and to follow in VO languages, then we would expect articles to precede the noun more often in OV languages than they do in VO languages. But the correlation is in the opposite direction. (M. Dryer)2. This universal follows from Branching Direction Theory (BDT) as discussed in Dryer 1992: 108-118.