“If Yoda a great Jedi master he is, why not a good sentence construct can he?”

I used to think this above sentence was pretty funny. But now I view Yoda’s “inverted” syntax as just one more instance of the standard Chomskian universal grammar with the verb at the end of the sentence, just like in ancient Greek or Japanese. Another rainbow unweaved.

Grape wine in the golden cup.
Fifteen year old beauty of exquisite suppleness.
Sandals embroidered red, eyelashes blue and thin.
Confused little words, but the sweetest song.
A shell in the braid, drunkenness in the heart,
The scent of lilies in the room: Too late to escape.

I found this poem once upon a time in a book in Raphael’s summer house. I translated it from the Greek. It is unkown how many intermediate translations there were between the original old Chinese and modern Greek. The poem is by Li Tai Po (701-762 CE), the epicurian poet of the Tang dynasty.

Notice the time of this post.