This grammatical line and the completely nonsensical line “Around the survivors, a perimeter, create” can both be explained by the fact that these are both imperative (command) sentences, and that doesn’t work for the syntax they tried to give Yoda in the prequels.
In the OT, Yoda’s syntax (word order/sentence structure) was all over the place, with varying degrees of grammaticality, but in the prequels for some reason they decided to standardize his nonstandardness to “move the main verb and anything that follows to the beginning of the sentence, adding ‘do/does’ if necessary” (VP-fronting with dummy-do support where necessary, in linguistic terms). This is at least marginally grammatical for most speakers, but heavily marked, making this way of speaking stand out.
In the vast majority of English sentences, this leaves the subject and any modals/auxiliaries (“helping verbs”) stranded at the end of the sentence. Give (most of) Yoda’s (prequel) sentences their idiosyncratic flair, this does.
Imperatives in English, however, are characterized by the fact that they have implicit (unstated) subjects and no modals/auxiliaries. This means that there’s no way to tell if the VP has been fronted, because the verb would occur at the beginning of the sentence anyway.
There are a few ways to fix this: 1) Just have Yoda say the sentence normally, as happened here, 2) Come up with something that is completely ungrammatical in English, as in the second example above, or 3) Never have Yoda use an imperative, and instead only have him use exhortative constructions like “We must…”, which they often do throughout the prequels.
Basically, because of how they standardized Yoda’s syntax in the prequels, there is effectively no way of getting a true imperative in English that both a) shows a nonstandard word order and b) is not complete word salad.
Source: I wrote a paper on Yoda’s syntax in grad school.
It was just an introductory syntax class paper, so definitely not that interesting theoretically. It started with an exploration of the data, showing that Yoda in the OT uses both significantly more “normal” sentences, and also significantly more varied word order patterns than in the PT, and then proceeded to the (generative, pre-Minimalist) syntactic analysis of the PT syntax (since that was the only data that was sensically analyzable).
That analysis was straightforward, and effectively what I’ve written here: VP-fronting, leaving TP/IP, NegP, and any AuxP stranded, and inserting and inflecting “do” when necessary so that the phi-features in T/I are expressed.
The paper concluded with some interesting/weird data and edge cases, such as the difficulty of creating imperatives in this system, and the oddness of questions for much the same reason as the imperatives (“More to say, have you?”, “Trained as a Jedi, you request for him?”).
Like I said, not too interesting theoretically, but a fun paper for a first-year grad student to write. :)
I don’t know what the most prestigious journal is in linguistics is (and I eill be disappointed if it is not called The Tongue), but I feel this paper deserves to be there.
Edit: apparently they are called:
Linguistics
Syntax and
Journal of Linguistics
The most prestigious journals for general theoretical linguistics are probably Language, Linguistic Inquiry, and maybe Glossa after the editorial pushback against Lingua about a decade ago for its opposition to open research availability (so you’re right that linguists often name their more prestigious journals after words for “tongue”!)
Either way, my first year paper’s analysis would be immediately obvious to any syntactician, and definitely doesn’t belong in a journal.
This grammatical line and the completely nonsensical line “Around the survivors, a perimeter, create” can both be explained by the fact that these are both imperative (command) sentences, and that doesn’t work for the syntax they tried to give Yoda in the prequels.
In the OT, Yoda’s syntax (word order/sentence structure) was all over the place, with varying degrees of grammaticality, but in the prequels for some reason they decided to standardize his nonstandardness to “move the main verb and anything that follows to the beginning of the sentence, adding ‘do/does’ if necessary” (VP-fronting with dummy-do support where necessary, in linguistic terms). This is at least marginally grammatical for most speakers, but heavily marked, making this way of speaking stand out.
In the vast majority of English sentences, this leaves the subject and any modals/auxiliaries (“helping verbs”) stranded at the end of the sentence. Give (most of) Yoda’s (prequel) sentences their idiosyncratic flair, this does.
Imperatives in English, however, are characterized by the fact that they have implicit (unstated) subjects and no modals/auxiliaries. This means that there’s no way to tell if the VP has been fronted, because the verb would occur at the beginning of the sentence anyway.
There are a few ways to fix this: 1) Just have Yoda say the sentence normally, as happened here, 2) Come up with something that is completely ungrammatical in English, as in the second example above, or 3) Never have Yoda use an imperative, and instead only have him use exhortative constructions like “We must…”, which they often do throughout the prequels.
Basically, because of how they standardized Yoda’s syntax in the prequels, there is effectively no way of getting a true imperative in English that both a) shows a nonstandard word order and b) is not complete word salad.
Source: I wrote a paper on Yoda’s syntax in grad school.
I like your funny words magic man
I would like to read that paper.
It was just an introductory syntax class paper, so definitely not that interesting theoretically. It started with an exploration of the data, showing that Yoda in the OT uses both significantly more “normal” sentences, and also significantly more varied word order patterns than in the PT, and then proceeded to the (generative, pre-Minimalist) syntactic analysis of the PT syntax (since that was the only data that was sensically analyzable).
That analysis was straightforward, and effectively what I’ve written here: VP-fronting, leaving TP/IP, NegP, and any AuxP stranded, and inserting and inflecting “do” when necessary so that the phi-features in T/I are expressed.
The paper concluded with some interesting/weird data and edge cases, such as the difficulty of creating imperatives in this system, and the oddness of questions for much the same reason as the imperatives (“More to say, have you?”, “Trained as a Jedi, you request for him?”).
Like I said, not too interesting theoretically, but a fun paper for a first-year grad student to write. :)
I don’t know what the most prestigious journal is in linguistics is (and I eill be disappointed if it is not called The Tongue), but I feel this paper deserves to be there.
Edit: apparently they are called: Linguistics Syntax and Journal of Linguistics
Imaginative bunch, this is.
The most prestigious journals for general theoretical linguistics are probably Language, Linguistic Inquiry, and maybe Glossa after the editorial pushback against Lingua about a decade ago for its opposition to open research availability (so you’re right that linguists often name their more prestigious journals after words for “tongue”!)
Either way, my first year paper’s analysis would be immediately obvious to any syntactician, and definitely doesn’t belong in a journal.
I appreciate the compliment though. :)
I love that idea. Props to your teachers for running with it.
I had an amazing prof for that class.
very purposefully fronting
This one grammars! 😘👌🏼