Editing Proto-Human language (section)

===Syntax===

There are competing theories about the [[Linguistic typology#Dominant order|basic word order]] of the hypothesized Proto-Human. These usually assume subject-initial ordering because it is the most common globally. [[Derek Bickerton]] proposes [[Subject–verb–object word order|SVO]] (subject-verb-object) because this word order (like its mirror [[Object–verb–subject word order|OVS]]) helps differentiate between the subject and object in the absence of evolved [[Case marker|case markers]] by separating them with the verb.<ref>{{cite book |last=Bickerton |first=Derek |author-link=Derek Bickerton |date=1981 |title=Roots of Language |url=https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/32840 |location=Ann Arbor |publisher=Karoma |page= |hdl=20.500.12657/32840 |isbn=9783946234104}}</ref>

By contrast, [[Thomas Givon|Talmy Givón]] hypothesizes that Proto-Human had [[Subject–object–verb word order|SOV]] (subject-object-verb), based on the observation that many old languages (e.g., [[Sanskrit]] and [[Latin]]) had dominant SOV, but the proportion of SVO has increased over time. On such a basis, it is suggested that human languages are shifting globally from the original SOV to the modern SVO. Givón bases his theory on the empirical claim that word-order change mostly results in SVO and never in SOV.<ref>{{cite book |last=Givón |first=Talmy |author-link=Thomas Givón |date=1979 |title=On Understanding Grammar |url= |location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=Academic Press |page= |isbn=978-0-12-285451-4}}</ref>

Exploring Givón's idea in their 2011 paper, [[Murray Gell-Mann]] and [[Merritt Ruhlen]] stated that shifts to SOV are also attested. However, when these are excluded, the data indeed supported Givón's claim. The authors justified the exclusion by pointing out that the shift to SOV is unexceptionally a matter of borrowing the order from a neighboring language. Moreover, they argued that, since many languages have already changed to SVO, a new trend towards VSO and VOS ordering has arisen.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Gell-Mann |first1=Murray |last2=Ruhlen |first2=Merritt |date=2011 |title=The origin and evolution of word order |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |volume=108 |issue=42 |pages=17290–17295 |bibcode=2011PNAS..10817290G |doi=10.1073/pnas.1113716108 |pmc=3198322 |pmid=21987807 |doi-access=free}}</ref>  

[[Harald Hammarström]] reanalysed the data. In contrast to such claims, he found that a shift to SOV is in every case the most common type, suggesting that there is, rather, an unchanged universal tendency towards SOV regardless of the way that languages change and that the relative increase of SVO is a historical effect of European colonialism.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.eva.mpg.de/fileadmin/content_files/linguistics/conferences/2015-diversity-linguistics/Hammarstroem_slides.pdf |title=The Basic Word Order Typology: An Exhaustive Study |last=Hammarström |first=Harald |date=2015 |website=www.eva.mpg.de |publisher=Max Planck Institute |access-date=2023-05-02 |quote= |archive-date=2022-08-11 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220811222639/https://www.eva.mpg.de/fileadmin/content_files/linguistics/conferences/2015-diversity-linguistics/Hammarstroem_slides.pdf |url-status=bot: unknown }}</ref>