I was watching a couple of the Star Wars movies that are being shown on TeeVee (haven’t seen AOTC yet) and I got to thinking about Yoda’s strange way of speaking. I’m majoring in Linguistics, so this sort of thing interests me. I also know a little bit about stuff like this.
I believe I have a theory as to what it is that Yoda is doing when he speaks the oddly formed sentences. If you listen to his sentences you notice that sometimes he speak perfectly normal English sentences (apparently he does this more in AOTC). On other occasions his sentences are not formed correctly (though they are perfectly understandable). Whatever the reason for his odd speech, it is very likely that it is a result of a transformational process that only occurs in certain situations.
I listened to the sentences he spoke in the movies listening for a pattern. The change seems to involve the movement of a word or phrase either to the front or back of the sentence. However, the moved words were not consistent in terms of grammatical category. This seems to imply that it has nothing to do with what category of word involved.
I then made an intuitive leap. I theorized that what he was doing is something called topicaliztion. It is a fairly common process in many languages, though not in English. In languages that have relatively free word order it is common to move a word you wish to emphasize to a specific position, usually the front or back of the sentence.
This theory needs to be tested by checking his utterances and seeing if there might not be another explanation. I believe that I have found the correct one, but I do not have enough data.
When Yoda says “A Jedi, you will be” (I don’t think this is an actual quote) he is emphasizing the Jedi part of the sentence. When he says “afraid, you are”, he is emphasizing afraid (not “you”). This might clash with the rule for forming questions (he wouldn’t say Are, you afraid").
So there you are. That’s my theory. What do you think? Would you like to cinduct the research necessary to establish the theory once and for all? All you need is a notebook and a writing implement to take down the Yoda’s exact words next time you encounter him.
It’s an interesting theory, and seems pretty logical, though I’m certainly no expert in linguistics. Maybe linguini (ewww… cheesy jokes). Anyway, I can definitely agree with the emphasizing thing.
We heard Michael Medved interview Frank Oz last week, and they talked about Yoda’s syntax. It was all very interesting. You can listen to the interview here:
Linguists classify language according to the sentence order of the Object, Subject, and Verb.
English is an SVO language.
Japanese is an SOV language.
Yodaese is an OSV language.
I think Yoda put in an appearance in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Linguistics as an illustration of the varieties of sentence order. In the whole world, well over 90% of languages are either SOV or SVO. OSV is one of the rarest possibilities, but does exist in a few real natural languages. The Amazonian language of Xavante is one example.
My own theory is bipartite: By using the very rare OSV, it’s an easy way to give a sense of Yoda’s alienness, otherness. But putting the verb at the end of the sentence is characteristic of Japanese and therefore suggests the mysterious martial-arts sensei.
Did anyone else feel that in AOTC, his messed up grammer seemed very forced? Empire, Jedi, it seemed simple enough, no big deal. But for some reason, I felt the writters spent too much time thinking of ways to make his speach sound broken and disjointed. Like when your friends try it, but fuck up really bad. Only this time, it got on screen.
I think Yoda’s shifts in grammar have less to do with topicalization and more to do with laziness of the writers. Usually he bounces between OSV and SOV, sometimes he just forgets.
I agree with Jomo Mojo, it’s meant to suggest Japanese. Someone mentioned in another thread that the word “Degobah” suggests something from Japanese mythology, Yoda’s meant to talk like a Zen master, and the Force is meant to be something akin to the concept of concept of kami in Shinto.
Of course, they didn’t get any of these exactly right, but you have to leave room for creativity. And besides, this is Hollywood movie, not a research essay.
Sjc, I think you’re onto something about when you mention topicalization. It would explain some of Yoda’s verbal inconsistencies.
However, there is another point to consider – Yodaese’s apparent grammatical requirement for almost every sentence to have a definite grammatical object. Read on.
Jomo Mojo has the basics down in his post above. I’d like to throw something on top of that: imagine the verb as a kind of fulcrum on which an entire sentence balances. This mental image helps distinguish between the styles of the following Yoda quotes:
“Begun this Clone War has.”
“A Jedi you will be.”
“When nine hundred years you reach, look as good you will not.”
…
Notice that in sentence 1, the auxillary verb “has” serves as the sentence’s fulcrum. “Has begun” is the full verbal form in English, with “has” serving as the auxillary. Yet in Yodaese, the main verb of the sentence – “begun” – gets shifted up to the front as a kind of grammatical object.
Properly in English, the sentence “This Clone War has begun” HAS no grammatical object – “begun” is an intransitive verb in this case. It’s basically an S-V sentence in English, yet Yodaese does not seem to allow an object-less sentence.
Sentence 2 is more clear cut – in English, “You will be a Jedi” comes out as a nice, neat S-V-O sentence. Conversion to Yodaese O-S-V is a snap – “A Jedi you will be”. Notice in this example that the auxillary verb “will” does not become the fulcrum of the sentence, as auxillary “has” does in Sentence 1.
Compound sentence 3 is the sentence Jomo Mojo alludes to above as being included in David Crystal’s The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Sentence 3 demonstrates both a transitive verb and an auxillary verb being used as the fulcrums of clauses – transative “reach” in the first clause, auxillary “will not” in the second clause.
They mentioned a theory that Yoda was really Amish, noting the simplicity of his life style and the oddities of his speech. This may make some sense by tracing both speech patterns back to German, where the verb is usually found at the end of the clause, sometimes very far away from the object.
They also listed the web page, Yoda masterclass - Learn to speak like a Jedi master in 3 simple steps, for anyone willing to learn Yodaese for themselves. (For some reason, a direct link won’t work. But if you go to www.twistedmindz.co.uk, it’s easy to find.)
I think Yoda could speak fluently in any of the galaxy’s thousand languages, but he choses not to.
I think Yoda speaks this way purposely to force people to think. Most of the time people just don’t listen, in one ear, out the other, just waiting for their turn to speak. - But if someone starts talking goofy, you’re forced to listen. You have to think in order to interpret what they’re saying. And his particular way of speaking invokes a feeling that he’s saying something wise and worth listening to.
When people hear language spoken a certain way, it invokes a certain emotional response. Think about the different ways you respond to different types of broken speech. How do you respond to a young child. How do you respond when someone speaking in a thick Hungarian accent asks you “My hovercraft is full of eels?” How do respond to hearing Data speak without ever using contractions?
I’m going to have to chew on what you all have said for awhile (assuming that is that I want to expend the energy on something like this).
Neptune, I think you may have a point, chances are he is capable of syntax that conforms to the standard that seems to apply in the Star Wars Universe.
Back to some of the more linguistic objections to my theory. I can’t give you an answer as to what I think of them yet, I still need more chewing time. I really need to listen to Yoda’s syntax in all of the movies and analyze it before I can say something truly meaningful about it.
I’m skeptical of Jomo Mojo’s OSV theory because I tried to listen for a consistent order of elements in Yoda’s speech and on the level of Subject, Object and Verb he didn’t seem consistent. I should note that I first tested this listening to Episode I.
bordelond, I’ll have to take your word on it until I can listen to authentic quotes with your theory in mind. A reason for using the auxiliary as a fulcrum just occured to me. Auxiliaries are important in forming English questions, if you start to mess with auxiliaries you could get a statement misunderstood as a question or it might become garbled.
Also, when Yoda moves a phrase to the beggining of a sentence I can hear an emphasis on the words that comes from a slightly louder vocalization and a pause.
Of course Yoda is a fictional character written by people who could probably care less abou these issues.
“Yodaese” always has the verb on the end. Sounds similar to German that is translated word for word into English. Hijack: What’s the subject, object, verb order for German?