Paiodd Discourse

Currently taking a Discourse Analysis class. It's got me thinking about how some of these things work in Paiodd. Normal word-order for Paiodd is OSV, though there is some wiggle room, so long as the S and V are directly adjacent (a weird quirk left-over from my pre-linguist days, when it seemed like the subject had a much more important connection to the verb than any objects; in other words, before I understood properly what a linguistic predicate was). Anyway, given that this is the standard, default word-order, it would suggest that generally, the comment, or new information is part of the predicate, the O, while the known information is the S, and perhaps the V as well. Yet I'm not sure that's necessarily the case, as I think it is possible to translate the following with indefinites:

(1)   Selor pivar weloun. 'A king commands a soldier.'

Actually, seeing it now, I don't think it does work. This sentence would normally be interpreted as 'The king commands a soldier', though 'The king commands the soldier' is also possible. So it would seem that my intuition is probably correct. New information CAN go into the O slot, though it is possible that it may be old information as well.

            If we consider the other logically possible orders, given the strict rule for SV adjacency, we have: VSO, OVS, and SVO. VSO is almost always the word-order for dependent clauses, as in (2):

(2)   Guír pivar oz eusé selor zir. 'The king saw his wife when the soldier entered the hall.'

In this case, the VSO clause is the second clause. It is possible to reverse the order, however, so that the dependent clause comes first, while the main clause is postposed to second position, as in (3):

(3)   Zir selor eusé oz pivar guír.

The meaning is roughly the same, though it sounds to me as though the wife is the soldier's, not the kings now. That's pretty interesting! To specify that it was the king's wife, I would simply use the possessive pronoun:

(4)   Zir selor eusé oz pivar íasem guír.

Well, I've just discovered something about Paiodd discourse, even though I can't entirely understand why that is. It does seem, however, that in the case of (3), the focus (comment, or new information) is on the wife, connecting her to the initial topic (known information) of selor 'the soldier'. In (2), however, both the king and his wife are the known entities (part of the topic), while the entry of the soldier is the comment/focus/new information, and there is an implication that the wife had a noticeable reaction to this new event. In (3), however, the implication is that the king was impressed by the soldier's wife.

This is an excellent example of how conlangs take on a life of their own, as well, since I did not intentionally think these things through, but I find them to be true in the language nonetheless. It certainly may be due to some influence from my native language or others that I'm familiar with, but it was not a conscious decision. I will no doubt continue to think through these things, and I hope to either update this post later or write another focusing on the use of other possible word orders and their effect on discourse.