Tentative assertion

What I absolutely eschew is a person who doesn't think something is true because he or she hasn't thought through the issue enough to consider the possibility that what has been said can be true.  I think it is also true that a certain failure of exposure to scientific inquiry makes one a little arrogant in what he or she does know.

The discussion was about the typologies of the world's languages.  Mostly it is true that about any aspect of a language that a person could think of in communicating to someone else in a standard way has been tried and/or is represented in the world's languages.  Typology is about the patterns of a language, generally speaking.  While it is true that languages have a dominant pattern for making statements, there are a number of different combinations languages have to do the work of questions, negation, emphatics, and other aspects.  In English S(ubject)/V(erb)/O(bject) is the dominant pattern even though other patterns do exist.

So, when I made the statement that Spanish had an OSV pattern in it, a person said he knew Spanish fluently and it wasn't so.  Well, you know what my next move would be.  And as it turns out, there are examples of and OSV pattern said as acceptable Spanish.  What the person didn't know were the principles of language.  He knew Spanish very well without a doubt because he was married to a native Spanish speaker.  He knew German well and had exposure to Vietnamese, so he had a good sense of language.  But, studying languages more analytically could have helped his cause.

Yo no voy a comer las naranjas, pero las manzanas, si, mama va a comer.     SVO + conj + OVS
I won't eat oranges, but apples, yes, mom will eat.     SVO + conj + OVS

He seemed a little surprised, but acknowledged the pattern's grammaticality.  I used to find myself in his position more times than I would like to admit when I was younger and had less ability to analyze language.  I am still wrong sometimes even now, but the difference might be that if I know I am on shaky  ground, I am much more tentative in making assertions.  I know the difference between when I have science on my side and when I don't.