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In Welsh, the usual order is for the verb to come first, followed by the
subject, followed in turn by the object:
Language Universals
If languages can differ from one another in these ways, one might ask:
Are there any restrictions on the ways in which they can differ from
one another? Are there some general properties that are common to all
human languages? There are. For instance, many languages use
differences in the order of elements to carry differences in meaning. In
English, one difference between the statement The green parrot can
speak Hixkaryana and the question Can the green parrot speak
Hixkaryana? is a difference in the order of elements of this kind, more
specifically inversion of the subject and the auxiliary verb. But no
language is known to relate sentences by inverting the order of
sentences of indefinite length (so that the question would appear as
Hixkaryana speak can parrot green the?). Linguists believe that such a
relation would violate constraints on humans' linguistic ability. In other
words, while languages can be astonishingly different from one another
and this is why it is important for linguists to study languages of as
many different types as possiblethere are nonetheless features that
unite all languages as different manifestations of the human language
ability.