word order
Ambiguous modifiers
Tweet Here are some examples of sentences where a better placed prepositional phrase would lead to clarity, but a misplaced one leads to humor. They come from The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, by Steven Pinker. “I once shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I’ll never know,” […]
SVO-VSO-SOV sentences
Tweet Here is a sampler of sentences in different syntactical configurations, using English as the neutral language to follow the patterns. English is an S(ubject)-V(erb)-O(bject) language. I am striving to get at the general principle here. A true linguistic analysis would be more detailed. 1. English (SVO): I saw Megan. Welsh (VSO): […]