OK, it's official. Just Plain Folks have decided that Yodic syntax is random word scrambling with sporadic category change. Here's Vox Pop himself, James Lileks, on Episode 3:
I love Yoda. I really do. Especially when he gets that mean look. Even though he reminds me of a cranky old man who finds his favorite stool at Denny’s is occupied by some high schoolers. People forget what a crappy death he had in Episode 6 – essentially, Luke went back to the Swampy Planet to check up on him, and he expires in a scene that had all the emotional impact of a wet shoe drying in the hot sun. Why? Because bucket kicking in the trilogy part of the last had someone to, I guess. [emphasis added]
To put the Yoda-imitation back in order needs something like this:
[bucket] [kicking] [in the] [trilogy] [part of the] [last] [had] [someone] [to]
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
3 6 5 4 8 7 9 2 1
[in the] [last] [part of the] [trilogy] [someone] [had] [to] [kicking] [bucket]
in which the last shall be not only first, but also anomalously nominalized.
Posted by Mark Liberman at June 11, 2005 08:08 AM