Why can't Yoda use proper grammar?

Cafe Society
41

Hey, why not. I’m pulling from Youtube clips, too lazy to go get the DVD and queue it up, so I may be missing a few lines.

I’m also totally half-assing this. I wish I’d put in more than a couple years of linguistics, I might have actually learned something. It’s amazing I have a degree in it. :smack:

Line-by-line analyses in spoiler boxes due to length:

Before Luke knows who Yoda is:

“Away put your weapon.” This is a VO command, but it’s unusual in that the phrasal verb “put away” is reversed. I think we can safely say there is no way this is correct by known rules of English (open to correction), though it is fully understandable.
“I mean you no harm.” Basic SVO.
“I am wondering, why are you here?” Again, basic SVO, though phrased a little more awkwardly than a native speaker would say.
“Found someone you have, I would say.” Yoda Rule OSV.
“Help you I can, yes.” Yoda Rule OSV (sort of; it’s really VOSmodal, but if you treat the modal as the sentence’s verb it’s OSV. I’m not writing a paper here.)
“Wars not make one great.” This is SVO, but it’s clearly fractured, missing a ‘do’.
“How you get so big eating food of this kind?” Again, SVO but missing a ‘do’.
“You cannot get your ship out?” SVO.
“Mine, or I will help you not.” SVO, archaic construction.
“My home this is.” Yoda Rule OSV.
“Stay and help you I will.” Yoda Rule OSV.
“You seek Yoda.” SVO.
“Take you to him, I will.” Yoda Rule OSV.
“But now, we must eat.” SVO.
“Patience. For the Jedi it is time to eat as well.” SVO, probably qualifies as archaic due to the prepositional phrase being first.
“Not far, Yoda not far.” SVO, leaving out the ‘is’.
“Soon, you will be with him.” SVO.
“Why wish you become Jedi?” VSO (guessing; it’s a question, but I’m not sure what the corresponding statement would be).
“Father. Powerful Jedi was he.” OVS, though not uncommon in archaic English.So far, we have:
Standard SVO = 6
Fractured/Archaic/Unusual SVO = 6
Yoda Rule OSV = 5
Other = 2

I also left out a whole lot of comical sounds and random chattering. It is pretty clear Yoda was playing up backwoods native here, playing up the unusual sentence structure. Straight SVO is in evidence, but it’s in the minority.

After Yoda reveals himself:

“I cannot teach him.” SVO.
“The boy has no patience.” SVO.
“Much anger in him, like his father.” Ehhhhhhhh I’m gonna score it SVO, though he left out the ‘There is.’ English is flexible with some word omission anyway.
“He is not ready.” SVO.
“Ready are you?” Yoda Rule OSV (it’s a question, the words are rearranged properly).
“What know you ready?” Very archaic, but I think it’s SVO.
“For 800 years have I trained Jedi.” SVO, archaic due to again putting the prepositional phrase first.
“My own council will I keep on who is to be trained.” Little green bastard’s getting complex now. “My own council will I keep” is OSV, though it’s not Yoda Rule OSV; if it were, it would be “My own council I will keep” or “Keep my own council I will.” The actual line is archaic English.
“A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind.” SVO.
“This one a long time have I watched.” Archaic OSV.
“All his life has he looked away to the future, to the horizon.” Archaic OSV.
“Never his mind on where he was, what he was doing.” …uhhhhh…VSO?
“Adventure. Excitement. A Jedi craves not these things.” Archaic SVO.
“You are reckless.” SVO.
“He is too old. Yes, too old to begin the training.” SVO.
“Will he finish what he begins?” SVO.
“You will be. You will be.” SV. :smiley:Total:
SVO = 9
Archaic SVO = 3
Yoda Rule OSV = 1
Archaic OSV = 3
VSO? = 1

That is a remarkable difference on first glance, and there’s no doubt Yoda is choosing to speak more clearly, but it’s actually not a really big difference. He went from 1/3 basic SVO and 2/3 basic and unusual SVO to 1/2 SVO and 3/4 basic and unusual SVO. If I add in the tally from the scene I analyzed earlier, it becomes even more one-sided in SVO’s favor.

It’s pretty apparent that while some of his more memorable lines are the Yoda Rule OSV, he’s not limited to that by any means and has a generally good grasp on standard English. I’d say what I said earlier holds up: he learned English (or Basic in the Star Wars verse) a long time ago, so his sentence structure will sound a little outdated. He can shift it as he desires, of course, just like I have no problem using double modals when I want to emulate a random Southern accent.

42

Hey, neat. Thanks!

Now get me a jack and Coke.

43

I love models with a southern accent.

44

Like hell. I’m getting it for myself because I just realized I spent an hour and a half on that bunch of pointless trivia.

45

Wait, let me try…

“Now a jack and Coke get me, enh?”

46

Ahem.

counsel

That is all.

47

Ah. So he’s the Columbo of the Jedi knights.

48

Funny that its the leader of the light side of the Force that uses deception so often.

49

Dammit! I even thought about which one to use! :smack:

50

What you did there, I see.

Here’s the trick: we feel Yoda talks “funny” not just because of the OSV (which stands out) but also the archaic structures that don’t match conventional form. While they are technically correct, they feel wrong because that’s not how we currently talk. So they add to the air that Yoda doesn’t speak “right”.

I have extracted these lines to make a further observation. These lines split the verb - the helping verbs and adverbs are not linked with the primary verb. In some cases, part of the verb is being used as part of the object. He is also putting prepositional phrases first and objects first for emphasis, which isn’t that awkward - it is fairly conventional. For example,

“When 900 years old you become, look this good you will not.” (Okay, that’s from Jedi, but still.)

A more conventional statement would be

“When you become 900 years old, you will not look this good.” But the archaic word order works for the second part primarily because it emphasizes the “not” at the end. It’s practically the 80s-ism of “notting” the end of sentence to reverse it.

“… look this good you will – NOT!” :wink:

Prepositional phrase first is perfectly conventional here. “For the Jedi” instead of “For you” is the “odd” bit.

The problem here is that he has mangled the infinitive. There should be a “to” in front of become.

A modern question would include the preposition “about”, and the helper verb “do”, and probably “being”. “What do you know about being ready?”

A different interpretation, and probably the intended one, is that he is old and feeble, but has the ability to channel the Force to overcome that feebleness. It’s just it takes effort, so is tiring. So he does it when required (a lightsaber fight) at the cost of being more tired afterwards. Whereas when it’s not necessary, he expends as little energy as possible and uses a cane.

51

Oh, absolutely. What I wanted to show with the analysis isn’t just that Yoda talks more normally than people remember (for a given value of normal, anyway), but when he doesn’t talk normally he’s not always using what I’ve been calling the Yoda Rule. His speech patterns carry a wide variety of interesting structures.

My beef is that the prequels dumb this down. I looked over some lines from Attack of the Clones, and while he does occasionally use standard SVO, he either uses SVO or the Yoda Rule. That’s it. And unlike ESB where it’s more standard/archaic than Yoda Rule, off the cuff AotC looks like it’s 50% Yoda Rule, if not more. It’s like they were working off a set of parameters rather than actually trying to make a living character.

“Senator Amidala, your tragedy on the landing platform, terrible. Seeing you alive brings warm feelings to my heart.”
“Until caught this killer is, our judgment she must respect.”
“Do not assume anything Obi-Wan. Clear your mind must be if you are to discover the real villains behind this plot.”
“Around the survivors a perimeter create.”
“Concentrate all your fire on the nearest starship.”
“Only a Dark Lord of the Sith knows of our weakness. If informed the senate is, multiply our adversaries will.”
“To the forward command center take me.”
“Powerful you have become Dooku, the dark side I sense in you.”

And on and on. What was an interesting, funny, wise character got reduced to a caricature.

52

You have failed me for the last time. At the next legal u-turn, turn around.

53

Bosstone, I agree with your analysis. In the ~20 years between Jedi and the start of the prequels, there as a lot of time for Yodaisms to soak into the collective conscious. When Lucas went back to the well, he* apparently didn’t go back to Yoda, he went to the collective consciousness of what “Yoda” is. Ergo, he made a caricature.

I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the prequels while watching them, but they were overall a disappointment due explicitly to hamhandedness like this.

*Whoever did the actual dialogue.

54

[fanwank]
What it means is Yoda’s grammar improved from episode 1-3 to what we hear in eps.4-6.[/fanwank] :smiley:

55

I think it’s from A Scandal in Bohemia.
From A Scandal in Bohemia I think it is.

56

OK that’s all interesting. I especially applaud all the transcript grammar analysis. Kudos to you.

But what I want to know, is, has anyone else of Yoda’s species spoken in canon?

I know there were others in the prequels, but I don’t remember if they spoke. But I haven’t seen the Clone Wars cartoon.

What’s the scoop… I mean… straight dope?

57

There’s a comic about Yaddle, the other whatever-Yoda-is on the Jedi Council. I can’t remember how she talked in it, though - it wasn’t a very good comic overall.

58

Some bright graduate student is going to scoop up all this research and insightful analysis and turn it into a thesis.

59

900 years old he is! (And his own counsel will he keep on Jedi who is to be!)

You’d think after a few hundred years of hanging around the Republic he’d kinda get the knack of proper “Galactic Standard” grammar.

60

Yoda suffers from what is known as “The Schwarzenegger Syndrome”.