Contrastive Analysis - Syntax

 
Syntax is the way words are arranged to form sentence. Languages around the world have different ways to arrange words to form sentences. For example in the English, using the example,

David walked to Jerusalem.

David is the subject (S), walked is the verb (V) and to Jerusalem is the object (O) (or "others" as the Korean students say, i.e., other parts of a sentence besides the subject and the verb). (Here, "object" is used to answer the "argument" of the verb walked: to where did David walk?)Therefore, English syntax is said to be S-V-O" subject-verb-object. It can also be observed that in English, a prepositional phrase is composed of a preposition + noun.

Using the regular word order in Tagalog, David walked to Jerusalem is rendered as Naglakad si David papuntang Jerusalem. Here we observed that in the regular Tagalog sentence, the verb (Naglakad) precedes the subject (David) which in turn precedes the object (papuntang Jerusalem), thus the regular Tagalog word order is V-S-O: verb-subject-object. It can also be observed that Tagalog uses an article (si) for names but English does not (it is generally not allowed in English to place an article in English, e.g., *The David but there are a few examples, e.g., The Philippines, The Ukraine, The Hague). The construction article + noun Si David can be substituted with a similar construction ang bata ('the child') as seen above.

In O-S-V, Yoda speaks.

The "inverted" Tagalog word order is S-V-O, the same as with English: Si David ay naglakad papuntang Jerusalem. But this is seen as "poetic" in Tagalog (much like the O-S-V construction in English To Jerusalem, David walked). There is also a "problem" in the copula ay in Tagalog. It is often rendered as a form of the verb to be (am, is, are) in English, as in David is walking to Jerusalem. But in Tagalog, ay can be substituted with a pause (represented by a comma) and the sentence will still make sense: Si David, naglalakad papuntang Jerusalem (progressive aspect). But in English, the copula be can never be removed: *David, walking to Jerusalem (present tense, progressive aspect).

Korean demonstrates an S-O-V order: Dawison (S) Yerusalemuro (O) georeotda. Here we see clitics at the ends of words: 1) -son is a "subject marker" (Dawid + -son = Dawidson; the last consonant of  the noun was "clipped" to make pronunciation easier) (one Korean student pointed out that -son is like the Tagalog si); and -uro is a preposition (Yerusalem + -uro).

Hebrew has a similar word order with Tagalog: V-S-O: Halak David b'Yerushalayim. (Note that Hebrew is written from right to left, as seen above). It can also be noted that in Hebrew, while the preposition precedes the noun as in English, it is a clitic attached to the front of the word: b' + Yerushalayim = b'Yerushalayim ('to Jerusalem').