Sentence order for Whispers is
Verb Object (Object adjective) (adverb) Subject (subject adjective)
subject is the portion most likely to be dropped, as in Spanish, if it is clear from verb conjugation.
This appears to be the order – or close to it – that I like for magic-using languages.
Which leads to a note – unlike Old Tongue (The magic language in Fae Apoc/Addergoole), Whispers is not a Magic Language in and of itself. One CAN do magic in other languages (and some groups not mentioned here yet do). It’s just that the Institution and its subgroups primarily use Whispers in their often-highly-ceremonial magical practices.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1039963.html. You can comment here or there.
(Grmpf. I started to write this 3–4 hours ago on my phone.) Or, in the terse jargon linguists use for the same reason anybody talking about cars says “carburetor” instead of “the thing that mixes the gasoline with air for ignition”: VOS, head-first “VOS” for the three main constituents of the sentence is obvious: Verb-Object-Subject. In the noun phrases and verb phrase, the modifier follows the thing it modifies (the “head”).
/tiredly amused/ I specifically didn’t use short-form so that I didn’t get any short form wrong. <.< Head-first is neat though. ACTUALLY that answers the question I was asking myself in another post. Sort of. No. Not at all. /tries again/
Here’s how it looks as a constituent structure tree (not the most modern form of analysis):
-P? pissy noun? Husband, who actually had grammar in school, suggests predicate.
Phrase
Ooouh! Got it! (this is really like reading a reference book written in a slightly different language.)
Awake now Lemme see Sentence: (Verb Phrase, consisting of Verb, Noun phrase (noun, Adj), and then Adverb) and then (Noun Phrase, consisting of noun then adjective)? I like this setup.