Language desk
< October 1	<< Sep \| October \| Nov >>	October 3 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

October 2

How common is inverting word order for questions cross-linguistically?

In some languages, asking a question sometimes inverts or at least shuffles the word order. For example, in “Where is the dragon,” the subject (the dragon) is moved to the end of the sentence. In “What did you do,” the object (what) is moved to the beginning, and the subject (you) is pushed backwards. In other languages, this doesn’t happen. For instance, in both Chinese and Japanese, the first example (“龙在哪里” and 「竜はどこですか」respectively) keeps the same word order it would for a declarative statement, and I know this is also true of the second example for Chinese. How common is this phenomenon, which kinds of languages generally do/don’t have it and under which circumstances, and why? Primal Groudon (talk) 02:11, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

According to Verb–subject–object word order § Inversion to VSO, non-VSO languages that use VSO in questions include English and many other Germanic languages such as German and Dutch, as well as French, Finnish, Maká, and Emilian. These languages do not otherwise have specific common characteristics. --Lambiam 07:34, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Primal_Groudon -- According to "Introduction to Typology: The Unity and Diversity of Language" by Lindsay J. Whaley (p. 238), inverted word order in yes-no questions is concentrated in European languages. This is different from moving "wh"-words in content questions to the front of a sentence, which is more widespread. Chinese has "wh- in situ" -- i.e. not even wh- words are moved to the front of a question sentence -- which makes it extremely unlikely to show inverted word order in yes-no questions. AnonMoos (talk) 09:27, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We actually have a redirect for Wh in situ; it should redirect specifically to Wh-movement#Languages in which it is not present, but instead redirects to the article as a whole... AnonMoos (talk) 22:58, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Another mention at In_situ#Linguistics... AnonMoos (talk) 22:59, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

WALS doesn't seem to have a feature exactly corresponding to this question, but Feature 93A: Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions and Feature 92A: Position of Polar Question Particles are related. --ColinFine (talk) 12:00, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]