What is it about?
Compared to modern languages, the word order in Latin is more flexible. It primarily reflects the speaker's communicative goals. The message is structured in such a way that it begins with something already known and ends with something new.
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Why is it important?
My findings show that the study of word order in Latin requires the development of a good method for identifying what is already known and what is new. Given the lack of native speakers in Latin, this method is also important for other languages without native speakers (such as Old English). Knowledge of word order is important for comparisons with Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, and other Indo-European languages.
Perspectives
Writing this book was a great challenge. I hope that it will offer some inspiration for both further studies of word order in Latin and studies of word order in other languages that share some properties with Latin.
Prof. Olga Spevak
University of Toulouse
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Constituent Order in Classical Latin Prose, March 2010, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/slcs.117.
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