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That is so cool. I speak indian languages such as Tamil and Hindi. I am not aware of such a usage that you are referring to. Can you give me an example? I am not able understand how word order makes clear the word that the speaker wants to emphasize. Is it peculiar to Hungarian?



Good keywords to search for are "topic" and "focus" and "topic-prominent languages".

Basically word order reflects the informational structure of the sentence, as opposed to grammatical structure. So what was known before, what is the new information, what is the surprising bit etc. East Asian languages like Japanese do this as well and are perhaps better known for this internationally.

I didn't say he stole the money. - Nem (not) én (I) mondtam (said-I), hogy (that) ellopta (he-stole) a (the) pénzt (money-accusative).

i DIDN'T say he stole the money. - Én nem mondtam, hogy ellopta a pénzt.

i didn't SAY he stole the money. - Mondani nem mondtam, hogy ellopta a pénzt. (Needs a bit of different structure)

i didn't say HE stole the money. - Nem mondtam, hogy ő lopta el a pénzt. (See how ő=he/she has only appeared now, it was implied by the conjugation before)

i didn't say he STOLE the money. - Nem azt mondtam, hogy ellopta a pénzt.

i didn't say he stole THE money. - Nem azt mondtam, hogy A pénzt lopta el. (This one is unusual already in English, we'd explicitly say "that money", not just "THE money").

i didn't say he stole the MONEY. - Nem azt mondtam, hogy a pénzt lopta el.

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Imagine if English had versions like:

Not I said he stole the money. I not said he stole the money. I not said stole he the money. I not said the money he stole.

Or something like that. Depending on which part is negated the order would be different. However since English morphology is very simple, you can't shuffle the words around because grammatical structure is only encoded by the words' position in the sentence, there are no significant conjugations and declensions to mark words according to their role in the sentence.




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