So we have examples of one work with inconsistent word order, could that not be because the publishing shops of the time used different scribes to mass produce a work.
Scribal errors exist of course, but their aim was still most of the time to copy a work as it was, so, except occasional mistakes, they would have copied it in the same word order, I see no reason why they would have deliberately changed the order for the fun of it. Anyway if such a thing had happened, I suppose we would now have thoroughly different readings with regards to word order in every manuscript of a same work, which I don't think is the case.
I'm just saying what concrete proof do we have
I think the texts themselves are sufficient proof of what happend at least in literature. Now you can argue that we have little proof concerning the spoken language.
do we have, say, like an ancient author specifically addressing word order etc.
I haven't read anything of the kind personally, but I haven't read much of the Roman grammarians, who are the most likely to have addressed such an issue. I know
LCF has read a bit of them these last months: have you found any passage concerning word order, LCF?
But to imagine how a listener would be able to absorb anothers' speech in real time without an amount of consistent *order* is where I become slightly sceptical.
I understand your doubt. I had the same. But once you find out that it's possible to read it without difficulty, you start thinking it must have been possible to hear it without difficulty as well. All the information that we in English (or French) convey by word order is there, but it's just conveyed by other means, principally the case endings, and
also by word order in fact, there IS some consistency, but in a different and more subtle, so to speak, way. The thing is that it works so differently from our native languages (by which our brains have been "formatted") that in the beginning it seems crazy and difficult, but in fact in the same way as when in English you hear, say, "bread" just after the verb "eat", you understand that it's the direct object because this information is conveyed by word order, well, in Latin if you hear the word
panem in the beginning of a sentence, you will understand that it's the direct object of a verb which is still to come, because that information is conveyed by the accusative ending.
And lastly, if that's the case, does that mean they would of thought differently to how we think. I mean thinking & forming thoughts plays a part in speech even as we speak.
I think that yes in a way. It's often said that each language has its own way of thinking.
Anyway word order is a big subject I think.
