Yoda Speech Generator3/22/2021
A funny line, timing-wise, but, as the linguist Mark Liberman pointed out at the time, not actually all that Yoda-esque. (A fucking break, give me, was one more Yoda-ish alternative offered in a blog post Liberman wrote on the subject at the time.) Looking more closely at Yoda, and particularly at his dialogue in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, further confused Liberman, who analyzed dozens of Yodas lines in the film.At first, Luke doesnt realize the long-eared, wrinkly green creature is, in fact, the one hes seeking.
Found someone, you have, I would say, hmmm Theres a narrative effect to the way Yoda speaks. To an English speaker, anyway, the way he orders his sentences sounds vaguely riddle-like, which adds to his mystique. But whats actually going on with Yoda, linguistically First, lets examine how Yoda doesnt speak. Many of the worlds most-spoken languagesEnglish, Mandarinare built around constructions that go subject-verb-object. Another common construction, and one youd find more commonly among speakers of Japanese, Albanian, and many other languages, goes subject-object-verb: Yoda the lightsaber grasped. More rare is a verb-subject-object construction, but thats how people who speak Hawaiian and some Celtic languages do it: Grasped Yoda the lightsaber. Even more unusual is the way Yoda famously speaks, ordering his sentences object-subject-verb, or OSV: The lightsaber Yoda grasped. Or, to use an example from an actual Yoda utterance: Much to learn, you still have. This is a clever device for making him seem very alien, said Geoff Pullum, a professor of linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. You have to do some work to realize that his, Much to learn, you still have, means You still have much to learn. There are other fictional examples of characters who speak like Yoda. Bowyer, from the 1996 Super Nintendo game, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, says things like, Fun this is, yes and Disturb me, you must not Practicing I am. But what about in the real world Surprisingly, there are a very few languagesit seems to be in single digitsthat use OSV as their basic or normal order, Pullum told me. As far as I know, they occur only in the area of Amazonia in Brazil: they are South American Indian languages. ![]() So, for example: Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is, as Yoda says in Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Pullum, in a blog post in 2005, called this construction fantastically rare in the real world. The curious feature of Yodas syntax that some linguists have commented on is that, although it is by no means consistent, he seems to speak as if he thinks OSV or XSV is normal, Pullum told me. In fact, he generalizes it, favoring the beginning of the sentence for various modifiers and complements that English syntax would normally leave till the end of the clause. Consider for example: When 900 years old you reach, look as good, you will not. But then there are other facets of Yoda-speak, times when he leaves auxiliary verbsvarious forms of be, do, and havedangling, as he does in a phrase like, Lost a planet, Master Obi-Wan has. And then there are the times when Yoda speaks in regular old subject-verb-object constructions. ![]() Writing for The New Yorker in 2005, Anthony Lane had this to say of Yodas screwy syntax: Break me a fucking give. A funny line, timing-wise, but, as the linguist Mark Liberman pointed out at the time, not actually all that Yoda-esque. A fucking break, give me, was one more Yoda-ish alternative offered in a blog post Liberman wrote on the subject at the time.) Looking more closely at Yoda, and particularly at his dialogue in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, further confused Liberman, who analyzed dozens of Yodas lines in the film.
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