As is well-known by now, modern Moundsbar, cursed with perhaps
the most rigid word-order known to us, not only disdains movement
rules, but actively pursues them with an eye to their destruction.
As a result, shouting, accompanied by a tensing of the facial
muscles, is the most common means of foregrounding a constituent in
this language, bolstered on certain occasions by the severer
device of grasping the intended hearer by the ears and lifting
slightly. This second strategy is rarely needed other than
in speaking to children, however, since adult Moundsbarians have
acquired the ability to watch each other’s lips carefully in order
to distinguish the various vowels, and under these conditions it is
hard to miss the facial tensing just mentioned.
This of course raises the question of in the
written language At earlier stages of both the spoken and the
written language, a constituent could be moved to the extreme left,
slamming it into a major juncture and giving rise to various
particles. This is still possible in the more archaic written
styles; however very few Moundsbarians can read and write today,
probably in part a result of their having acquired the cathode-ray
tube before they had completely mastered agriculture. Those few
who are literate usually do not read aloud, in fear of losing their
lives by appearing to move constituents.
Constituents are backgrounded, or removed as it were from the
spotlight, by deleting them. This may include entire predicates,
resulting in sentences which convey no new information whatever,
other than underlyingly. This is either good or bad, depending on
one’s linguistic theory; the Moundsbarians themselves do not have
linguistic theory and thus it is not surprising that they have not
been heard to express a viewpoint on the matter. One of my older
informants suspended his ritual insults long enough to opine that
in general there is no new information. Make of this what you
will
Being double-parked at the moment, I am unable here to go into
the question of the origin of the Moundsbarian fear of movement
rules. Comparative evidence would be of help, and despite the
vehement protests of the peoples involved, there are a number of
languages in the area related to Moundsbar, several of which
appear to have movement rules. When I understand all this, I will
let you know.
—Metalleus
* In this note
will mean the simple designation
of what the speaker is talking . To those who object to this, I say,
