Okay, I've been through all the movies minus RotS, and I've found two interesting linguistic deviations between Original Trilogy Yoda and Prequel Yoda.

The first: OT Yoda uses OVS construction in equative clauses. This means he says the Object (or the complement in this case) first, then the Verb, then the Subject in sentences where the main verb is "be". This is acceptable, and even euphonious, to speakers of American English, because it follows rules accepted in an older English style. Take these examples:

"Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter."

"Always in motion is the future."

"Strong is Vader."

"Anger...fear...aggression. The dark side of the Force are they."

"Strong am I with the Force... but not that strong!"

In these examples, and in fact in the entire OT corpus, 100% of equative clause sentences carried an OVS construction.

Now, lets look at the second set of data (the prequels)

"Hard to see, the dark side is."

"Revealed your opinion is."

"Clouded this boy's future is."

"The chosen one the boy may be."

"But for certain, Senator, in grave danger you are."

"Truly wonderful the mind of a child is."

Notice that in every instance, 100% of equative clauses are OSV, not OVS. This is representative of the entire corpus. This means that every one is verb final, which is much more unusual and uncommon in standard English antiquated or otherwise, and generally has a more foreign, "incorrect" sound to them. At the very least, the speech pattern is markedly and wildly different from the original movies.

Interesting, wot? My next post will point out perhaps an even more grave error concerning Yoda's differing speech patterns.

Regards,

Tim