WORD ORDER IN SIMPLE NARRATIVE SENTENCES IN THE OLD SPANISH LANGUAGE (BY THE EXAMPLE OF FORMAL LETTERS)

Abstract

There are different classifications of sentences. Structurally-typological approach to the classification of sentences is based on a comparison of the word order, i.e. the position of main and secondary components in a simple sentence. Such an approach follows from the theory of language typology elaborated by the American linguist J. Greenberg. In the theoretical part the report provides the main thesis of the classical Greenberg’s theory, which is based on the order of the basic components of a simple sentence: subject (S), verb (V) and object (O). According to this theory any language admits different configurations of the elements: SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OSV or OVS, but the dominant order can be only one. Greenberg took into account only sentences with nominal subject and nominal object. As a rule the most frequent orders are SVO, SOV and VSO. The other three orders VOS, OSV, OVS are very rare and hardly reach the dominant status. Spanish is traditionally considered SVO-language. Nevertheless there are contemporary linguistic investigations that give new information according to which the Spanish language is not only the type SVO but also the type VSO. As for the old Spanish language there are different opinions: some linguists consider that the type VSO is an intermediate one between the Latin order SOV and modern Spanish order SVO, others refer the old Spanish language to the type SVO. Thus, the aim of the report is to analyze the types of simple narrative sentences in the language of formal letters written in old Spanish of the XIII century. Based on the theory of J. Greenberg the author examines models of simple sentences with so called full syntactic frame, i.e. models where subject and object are expressed by separate word. In models SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OSV, OVS the author distinguishes pronominal, nominal and pronominal-nominal ways of the subject expression, as well as the nominative object and pronominal object-clitic. The examples from formal letters dated by the XIII century show that the old Spanish language refers to the type SVO.