A good while back, Max brought up the topic of "cleavage", whereby the most topical information in the sentence is moved to the front. A simple example would be:

Nach ormsa a bhí an t-ádh?!

The only two languages I have much experience with are English and Irish. From my experience with both of them, it seems to me that they have very different requirements for cleavage.

In Irish, it seems that cleavage is compulsory, and that the sentence sounds just plain wrong if cleavage isn't used correctly.

In English however, there's a tendancy not to use cleavage, but it still gets used once in a while (e.g. It wasn't him we saw.). Nonetheless though, the sentence is still OK if cleavage isn't used, e.g. (We didn't see him)

From your own experience, do you think languages can be lumped into one of three categories:

(1) Cleavage Compulsory (e.g. Irish)
(2) Cleavage Optional (e.g. English)
(3) Cleavage Absent (Can't think of any)

I think that in any language, cleavage should never be overlooked as an important aspect; it gives emphasis which is usually and instantly recognised.

Perhaps "fronting" is a more appropriate term for what Fear na Bróg describes above. At least that's what we used in language classes when discussing the emphasis of a particular aspect of a sentence being moved to the front.

Hi,

I've come across 'pile ups' as a product of such 'fronting' when studying German & Chinese...

It is quite famous as a characteristic of German, where the verbs split & 'pile ups' of the 'second parts' of verbs used end the sentence...

Chinese, as I recall does something like the reverse of what happens in Irish, so much so that it's said that reading & (especially listening to) Chinese can be a bit like hearing an extremely slow speaker speak...

Again, this is from memory, I haven't studied it for years, but the Chinese sentence structure often starts by stating the nuances of whatever the point is & only presenting that which is the 'main matter' toward the end of the sentence or statement...

I could bore you by writing my thoughts on how this is an extremely significant point (on Math's, Computing & the whole Sapir-Whorf linguistic determinism fronts) but I won't...

K