DOCSLIB.ORG

The Role of Processing Complexity in Word Order Variation and Change

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Role of Processing Complexity in Word Order Variation and Change THE ROLE OF PROCESSING COMPLEXITY IN WORD ORDER VARIATION AND CHANGE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Harry Tily August 2010 © 2010 by Harry Joel Tily. All Rights Reserved. Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/ This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/sr587rm2997 ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Thomas Wasow, Primary Adviser I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Arto Anttila I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Daniel Jurafsky I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Roger Levy Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives. iii Abstract All normal humans have the same basic cognitive capacity for language. Nevertheless, the world's languages differ in the kind and number of grammatical options they give their speakers to express themselves with. Sometimes, a language's grammatical constructions may differ in how easy they are for comprehenders to process or how readily speakers will choose them. It has been observed that languages which allow more difficult constructions also tend to allow easier ones, and when a language only allows one option, it tends to allow the easiest to process (Hawkins, 1994, 2004). This correlation is intuitive: languages tend to give their speakers options that they find easy to use. However, the causal process that underlies it is not well understood. How did the world's languages come to have this convenient property? In this dissertation, I discuss a family of evolutionary models of language change in which processing- efficient variants tend to be selected more frequently, and hence over time have the potential to displace less efficient variants, pushing them out of the language. I begin by showing that a psycholinguistic theory, dependency length minimization (see e.g. Gibson, 2000, i.a.), accounts for word ordering preferences in data taken from Old and Middle English just as it does in Present Day English. I then discuss computer simulations of a model of language change which implements this bias, predicting observed word order changes in English. Finally, I present experimental studies of online comprehension in Japanese which not only display evidence for the dependency length bias, but also suggest that comprehenders encode it as part of their knowledge about language, using it to help understand the sentences they receive from their peers. iv To my parents, Sally and Rob v Acknowledgments A dissertation is a lot like a tumor. Mine was first diagnosed by my adviser, Tom, who pointed out that some of the topics we had been chatting about during our meetings were beginning to sound dangerously like a dissertation project. Of course, by that point, it had probably been taking form for months or years unnoticed, thanks to earlier exposure to ideas and influences from many others around the department and elsewhere. But it was really only in the last year or so that I recognized how much this dissertation project has grown | seemingly of its own accord | to the point that it has shaped the way I think about almost all aspects of language. Now that I have a final document in front of me, excised and ready to submit, I can much more easily recognize those influences and see how they have grown together. I have many people to thank for my tumor. First and foremost is Tom Wasow, an adviser for whom the word \adviser" isn't an adequate job title. I've received insight, aid, and encouragement from Tom, during the writing of this dissertation and before, that went far beyond anything you could call \advice". I'm honored to have been one of Tom's students. I've also benefited enormously from the input of the other members of my dissertation committee. Roger Levy was originally lured into coming on board to help with a research project that I ended up not including in the dissertation, but instead he managed to give insights and guidance right across the very broad range of topics I foolishly tried to cram into this document. Elizabeth Traugott, who unfortunately couldn't be around during the final revisions and defense, humored some of my strange ideas about language change with interest and open mindedness, while always being able to point me in the right direction when I began to veer into the untenable or simply wrong. I regret vi only beginning to talk to Arto Anttila quite late in the process, since I've found the ideas I gained by doing so eye-opening. Finally, I probably enjoyed my meetings with Dan Jurafsky more than any other academic conversations I've had: Dan is the Brita filter of academic mentors, taking murky and unpalatable half-ideas and making them transparent and appealing almost in real-time. The six years I spent at Stanford were the most intellectually stimulating I have experienced. The atmosphere in the Linguistics Department is scholarly, but fiercely collaborative and supportive, to the point that it sometime feels as though other students and faculty are competing with each other to help, teach, and inspire you the most. My academic path has been shaped enormously by that environment. I'm especially grateful to Joan Bresnan, whose inspiring classes and seminars turned into research projects that gave me the first taste of the empirical linguistics I would end up advocating. I was also lucky to have Florian Jaeger around for the first few years as a trailblazing senpai, and I think any one of our long and fruitful discussions could have worked out as an alternative dissertation project. I've been the willing recipient of his generous advice and ideas ever since. The same holds for many other fellow students here: for instance, Uriel Cohen Priva, Marie-Catherine de Marneffe, Laura Whitton, Laura Staum Casasanto and Philip Hofmeister, just to list a few with impressive-sounding last names. In fact, since so many other students have made my PhD experience so much better, I could just have cut-and-pasted a list from the department website here. But you know who you are. Thank you all! Perhaps more than any of my friends at Stanford, I will miss my former room- mates, Inbal Arnon, Lis Norcliffe, and Scott Grimm; as well as my neighbor, Neal Snider. Between cohabitation, commuting, and collaboration, I ended up sharing most of my life with you for a few wonderful years. And I'd do it all again. Some day in the near future we will get together in San Francisco, cook shakshouka, and reminisce. Finally at Stanford, I owe a huge debt to the department's administrative staff. In particular, Melanie, Gretchen and Alyssa patiently managed to fix every one of my attempts to fail out of the program by getting most bureaucratic and department requirements entirely wrong, and no doubt averted many more similar catastrophes vii behind the scenes. Thank you! Beyond Stanford, I have been lucky enough to visit and work with some of the smartest and most interesting people I can imagine. In Paris, Luc Steels and the members of his group (particularly Remy van Trijp, Wouter Van den Broeck, and Martin Loetzsch) made me welcome in a new and beautiful city, and taught me to think about my research in a very different way. I hope that influence is apparent in this dissertation, as I think it will be in all my work hereafter. At MIT, I was amazed at the brilliant ideas that were thrown around like confetti every day in Ted Gibson's lab. The collaborations which I began there with Ted, as well as Ev Fedorenko, Steve Piantadosi, and Mike Frank have become so important to me that they are now basically what I do, and for that I'm very grateful. A much earlier influence, and perhaps the fundamental reason I followed the path I have ended up on, is that of Antje Meyer, who \adopted" me during my undergrad degree. I got my first taste of a real lab, and of any real collaborative academic environment from Antje and her lab members. Thank you! Just as much as the academic influences, my friends and family are responsible for me having survived grad school. In San Francisco, I'd like to thank Neal and Natalie, Robert, and Fabian for the many good times. Also Melissa, Alexis and Tessa, and all former, current, and (why not) future residents of the infamous house on Church St, where I could and frequently did forget I was a grad student and remember I was a person. In Tokyo, my life has been much better for Vicky Muehleisen, Nobuko Suzuki, John Brooke, Kuki Koibuchi, and Greg Poitevin.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Nonnative Acquisition of Verb Second: on the Empirical Underpinnings of Universal L2 Claims
    Nonnative acquisition of Verb Second: On the empirical underpinnings of universal L2 claims Ute Bohnacker Lund University Abstract Acquiring Germanic verb second is typically described as difficult for second-language learners. Even speakers of a V2-language (Swedish) learning another V2-language (German) are said not to transfer V2 but to start with a non-V2 grammar, following a universal developmental path of verb placement. The present study contests this claim, documenting early targetlike V2 production for 6 Swedish ab-initio (and 23 intermediate) learners of German, at a time when their interlanguage syntax elsewhere is nontargetlike (head-initial VPs). Learners whose only nonnative language is German never violate V2, indicating transfer of V2-L1 syntax. Informants with previous knowledge of English are less targetlike in their L3-German productions, indicating interference from non-V2 English. V2 per se is thus not universally difficult for nonnative learners. in press in: Marcel den Dikken & Christina Tortora, eds., 2005. The function of function words and functional categories. [Series: Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today] Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins (pp. 41-77). Nonnative acquisition of Verb Second: On the empirical underpinnings of universal L2 claims Ute Bohnacker Lund University 1. Introduction This paper investigates the acquisition of verb placement, especially verb second (V2), by native Swedish adults and teenagers learning German. Several recent publications (e.g. Platzack 1996, 2001; Pienemann 1998; Pienemann & Håkansson 1999; Håkansson, Pienemann & Sayehli 2002) have claimed that learners, irrespective of their first language (L1), take the same developmental route in the acquisition of syntax of a foreign or second language (L2).
    [Show full text]
  • Automatic Evaluation of Syntactic Learners in Typologically-Different
    Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Cognitive Systems Research 9 (2008) 198–213 www.elsevier.com/locate/cogsys Automatic evaluation of syntactic learners in typologically-different languages Action editor: Gregg Oden Franklin Chang a,*, Elena Lieven b, Michael Tomasello b a Cognitive Language Information Processing Open Laboratory, NTT Communication Sciences Laboratories, NTT Corp., 2-4 Hikari-dai, Seika-cho, Souraku-gun, 6190237 Kyoto, Japan b Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany Received 7 June 2007; received in revised form 12 September 2007; accepted 6 October 2007 Available online 1 November 2007 Abstract Human syntax acquisition involves a system that can learn constraints on possible word sequences in typologically-different human languages. Evaluation of computational syntax acquisition systems typically involves theory-specific or language-specific assumptions that make it difficult to compare results in multiple languages. To address this problem, a bag-of-words incremental generation (BIG) task with an automatic sentence prediction accuracy (SPA) evaluation measure was developed. The BIG–SPA task was used to test several learners that incorporated n-gram statistics which are commonly found in statistical approaches to syntax acquisition. In addition, a novel Adjacency–Prominence learner, that was based on psycholinguistic work in sentence production and syntax acqui- sition, was also tested and it was found that this learner yielded the best results in this task on these languages. In general, the BIG–SPA task is argued to be a useful platform for comparing explicit theories of syntax acquisition in multiple languages. Ó 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
    [Show full text]
  • An Introduction to Linguistic Typology
    An Introduction to Linguistic Typology An Introduction to Linguistic Typology Viveka Velupillai University of Giessen John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 8 the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data An introduction to linguistic typology / Viveka Velupillai. â. p cm. â Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Typology (Linguistics) 2. Linguistic universals. I. Title. P204.V45 â 2012 415--dc23 2012020909 isbn 978 90 272 1198 9 (Hb; alk. paper) isbn 978 90 272 1199 6 (Pb; alk. paper) isbn 978 90 272 7350 5 (Eb) © 2012 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company • P.O. Box 36224 • 1020 me Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O. Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA V. Velupillai: Introduction to Typology NON-PUBLIC VERSION: PLEASE DO NOT CITE OR DISSEMINATE!! ForFor AlTô VelaVela anchoranchor and and inspiration inspiration 2 Table of contents Acknowledgements xv Abbreviations xvii Abbreviations for sign language names xx Database acronyms xxi Languages cited in chapter 1 xxii 1. Introduction 1 1.1 Fast forward from the past to the present 1 1.2 The purpose of this book 3 1.3 Conventions 5 1.3.1 Some remarks on the languages cited in this book 5 1.3.2 Some remarks on the examples in this book 8 1.4 The structure of this book 10 1.5 Keywords 12 1.6 Exercises 12 Languages cited in chapter 2 14 2.
    [Show full text]
  • The Acquisition of Word Order in Different Learner Types
    The Acquisition of Word Order in Different Learner Types Cristina Pierantozzi University of Hamburg 1. Introduction The aim of this work is twofold. First, I will examine whether the acquisition of word order is subject to transfer in child second language learners (cL2), as has been claimed for adult second language learners (Schwartz & Sprouse 1996). Second I will provide a classification of the cL2 children on the basis of the frequency of transfer, using predictions that can be derived from the Full Transfer Full Access Hypothesis (FTFA Schwartz & Sprouse 1996). I will investigate two groups of young children acquiring German (L1 French) and French (L1 German) as a second language at the age of 3-4. In particular, I will analyze the acquisition of word order by looking at the subject and verb position in main clauses and the OV/VO parameter (Neeleman and Weerman 1999) taking into account all clauses with complex verbs. According to the FTFA: a) transfer must be systematic at the onset of acquisition and b) all of the syntactic differences in the L1 must be transferred into the L2 grammar. I will demonstrate that, contrary to the prediction of the FTFA, the attested transfer seems to depend on the structural properties of the languages involved, rather than reflecting full transfer from L1 to L2. More precisely, what seems to look like transfer is asymmetrically distributed in the observed syntactic domain: German children acquiring French do not transfer the German V2 into French, while French children acquiring German use the ungrammatical V3 structure, even in later stages of acquisition.
    [Show full text]
  • Explanation in Typology
    Explanation in typology Diachronic sources, functional motivations and the nature of the evidence Edited by Karsten Schmidtke-Bode Natalia Levshina Susanne Maria Michaelis Ilja A. Seržant language Conceptual Foundations of science press Language Science 3 Conceptual Foundations of Language Science Series editors Mark Dingemanse, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics N. J. Enfield, University of Sydney Editorial board Balthasar Bickel, University of Zürich, Claire Bowern, Yale University, Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, University of Helsinki, William Croft, University of New Mexico, Rose-Marie Déchaine, University of British Columbia, William A. Foley, University of Sydney , William F. Hanks, University of California at Berkeley, Paul Kockelman, Yale University, Keren Rice, University of Toronto, Sharon Rose, University of California at San Diego, Frederick J. Newmeyer, University of Washington, Wendy Sandler, University of Haifa, Dan Sperber Central European University No scientific work proceeds without conceptual foundations. In language science, our concepts about language determine our assumptions, direct our attention, and guide our hypotheses and our reason- ing. Only with clarity about conceptual foundations can we pose coherent research questions, design critical experiments, and collect crucial data. This series publishes short and accessible books that explore well-defined topics in the conceptual foundations of language science. The series provides a venue for conceptual arguments and explorations that do not require the traditional book-length treatment, yet that demand more space than a typical journal article allows. In this series: 1. Enfield, N. J. Natural causes of language. 2. Müller, Stefan. A lexicalist account of argument structure: Template-based phrasal LFG approaches and a lexical HPSG alternative 3. Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten, Natalia Levshina, Susanne Maria Michaelis & Ilja A.
    [Show full text]
  • A Formal Characterization of Person-Based Alignment
    A formal characterization of person-based alignment Maria Luisa Zubizarreta & Roumyana Pancheva Natural Language & Linguistic Theory ISSN 0167-806X Nat Lang Linguist Theory DOI 10.1007/s11049-016-9357-5 1 23 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self- archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com”. 1 23 Author's personal copy Nat Lang Linguist Theory DOI 10.1007/s11049-016-9357-5 A formal characterization of person-based alignment The case of Paraguayan Guaraní Maria Luisa Zubizarreta1 · Roumyana Pancheva1 Received: 16 June 2015 / Accepted: 24 December 2016 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017 Abstract We put forth a formal analysis within the Minimalist framework of argu- ment alignment in languages with one type of direct/inverse system. Our proposal involves the cyclical application of a phase-edge Person constraint, which ensures that a [+Participant] argument (when present) is promoted from the verbal (vP) to the inflectional (IP) domain. We illustrate the proposed analysis with Paraguayan Guaraní, a language with direct/inverse alignment whose morpho-syntax has received little attention from a formal perspective.
    [Show full text]
  • Modern Eastern Armenian: SOV Or SVO? Pegah Faghiri, Pollet Samvelian
    Modern Eastern Armenian: SOV or SVO? Pegah Faghiri, Pollet Samvelian To cite this version: Pegah Faghiri, Pollet Samvelian. Modern Eastern Armenian: SOV or SVO?. Western Conference on Linguistics (WECOL) 2019, Nov 2019, Fresno, United States. halshs-02720181 HAL Id: halshs-02720181 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02720181 Submitted on 1 Jun 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Modern Eastern Armenian: SOV or SVO?* Pegah Faghiri and Pollet Samvelian Université Sorbonne Nouvelle 1 Introduction The question of whether the ‘unmarked’ or ‘canonical’ word order in Modern Eastern Armenian (MEA)1 is (S)OV or (S)VO is a matter of controversy. MEA can be considered a flexible language with respect to the ordering possibilities of the three major constituents S, O, and, V, at the clausal level. This means that all permutations, which give rise to six possible orders SOV, SVO, VSO, VOS, OVS, and OSV, are grammatical. Among these possible orders, two occur more frequently, SOV and SVO. Given that S occurs in the initial position in both cases, the controversy involves the relative order between O and V: Is MEA an OV or VO language? With very few exceptions (Dum-Tragut, 2009, Dryer 2013), typological and descriptive studies have generally grouped Armenian with SOV languages (Der-Houssikian, 1978:227-8; Dryer, 1998:286, 310; Dum-Tragut, 2002; Hawkins, 1979:625; Hawkins 1983:286, Kozintseva, 1995: 8; Minassian, 1980: 263; among others2).
    [Show full text]
  • The VO-OV Split of Germanic Languages – a T3 & V2 Production
    The VO-OV split of Germanic languages – a T3 & V2 production Hubert Haider (08/2012) – Dept. of Linguistics, Univ. Salzburg 2014. Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis. 19(1): 57-79. 1 Abstract With respect to their word order type, the sizeable Indo-European language families (Romance, Slavic) are ho- mogenous, except for the Germanic family. Germanic is the only Indo-European language family that has split into an OV group (continental West-Germanic, with head-final VPs and APs), and a VO-group (head-initial phrases only). The predecessor languages of the modern Indo-European languages in general and of the German- ic languages in particular, are neither OV nor VO, but they are representative of a third type (T3), as will be argued. A single Germanic language, namely Yiddish, has preserved (or regained) its type III quality (amidst other T3 Slavic languages). Latin, the mother of all Romance languages has been T3, too. The descendant languages are VO without excep- tion. The Slavic languages have conserved their T3 grammars. Germanic appears to be exceptional. What is it that has triggered or facilitated the Germanic split? The answer involves a second ‘exceptional’ trait of Germanic. Germanic is the only Indo-European language family that has developed and maintained the V2 property, with a single language ‘left behind’, namely English. It is the grammaticalization of the V2 property that facilitated the change and triggered the transition from T3 to OV and VO, respectively. It is a change from an underspecified to a specified directionality of complement se- lection by the head of the phrase.
    [Show full text]
  • 95 Relationship Between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase
    TWAC095.qxd 28/01/2005 14:42 Page 386 95 Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase MATTHEW S. DRYER 1 Defining the values also uncommon; it is atypical for VO languages to have postposi- tions. The examples in (3) from Koyra Chiini (Songhay; Mali) illus- One of the central activities in linguistic typology is the investigation trate this type, (3a) illustrating the VO order and (3b) a postposition. of relationships between different typological features. Maps 95, 96, and 97 illustrate three sorts of relationship between typological (3) Koyra Chiini (Heath 1999b: 103, 124) features. If one takes two typological features with two values each, a. har di o guna woy di they intersect to define four possible language types. This map, Map man def impf see woman def 95, illustrates a case where two of these types are very common and ‘The man sees the woman.’ two are relatively uncommon. Map 96 illustrates a case where three b. ay too huu di ra of these types are very common and one is relatively uncommon. 1sg arrive house def loc And Map 97 illustrates a case where there is no interaction between ‘I arrived in the house.’ the two features, where all four types are very common. Each of these three maps shows the relationship between two features that This type is also illustrated in (4), from Arawak (Arawakan; are shown separately on other maps in this atlas. Suriname), (4a) illustrating the VO order, (4b) a postposition. This map shows the relationship between two of the values shown in Map 83, OV (object-verb order) and VO (verb-object order), and (4) Arawak (Pet 1987: 47, 83) two of the values shown on Map 85, postpositions versus preposi- a.
    [Show full text]
  • Headedness, Again*
    Headedness, again* Maria Polinsky Introduction1 Headedness is an intriguing feature of language design. On the one hand, headedness manifests itself very clearly; preposed relative clauses are visibly different from postposed ones, and postpositions are easily distinguished from prepositions. More generally, structural heads (the constituents which determine the category of their phrase) either precede or follow their dependents. On the other hand, there is room for disagreement and variation in the assessment of headedness. For instance, the ordering of determiners and nouns can be viewed differently depending on what counts as the head, causing disagreements over the headedness of nominal constituents. Furthermore, even if all linguists agree on what counts as the head and what counts as a dependent, there is no requisite consistency in the way dependents and heads are ordered across different phrases within the same language. An otherwise dependably head-final or head-initial language may exhibit exceptions; the results are messy, and researchers get discouraged. There is, as of yet, no good explanation for headedness. The phenomenon is visible; it is rather robust; it seems easy to learn (Lupyan and Christiansen 2002; Van Everbroeck 2006), but what is it? This question has puzzled many linguists, and we still do not know its answer. When dealing with something that is unfamiliar it is often tempting to just toss it out as unnecessary or superficial. Researchers now and again have suggested that headedness is no more than a trivial pattern-recognition device without much deep meaning and with no value in linguistic theory. Yet it is hard to dismiss a device that is so pervasive.
    [Show full text]
  • Phrase Structure Directionality: Having a Few Choices
    PHRASE STRUCTURE DIRECTIONALITY: HAVING A FEW CHOICES by ALEXANDRA ZEPTER A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School - New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Linguistics written under the direction of Professor Mark Baker and approved by Mark Baker Jane Grimshaw Ken Safir Peter Sells New Brunswick, New Jersey October, 2003 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Phrase Structure Directionality: Having a few Choices by ALEXANDRA ZEPTER Dissertation Director: Professor Mark Baker The thesis claims that the linear organization of specifier, head and complement in a phrase and throughout a syntactic tree is determined by a conflict between general violable constraints on X-bar-structure. The adopted framework is Optimality Theory (cf. Prince & Smolensky 1993; in syntax, cf. Grimshaw 1997). The proposed constraint system explains why phrase structure directionality is mostly uniform and why only some non-uniform cases exist, while other logically possible kinds of mixed directionality are unattested. Central to the dissertation is the idea that head-initial oriented languages have a greater structural conflict to resolve inside their lexical projections than head-final languages: The combination of a general preference for [head - complement]-order and for a left-peripheral specifier bars the lexical head from surfacing at an edge of the phrase. The combination of a general preference for [complement - head]-order and for a left-peripheral specifier still allows alignment at one edge. This greater conflict can be resolved in different ways, which leads to slightly more variation among head-initial oriented languages: Not only do we find uniform SVO-languages, but we also find VOS-languages, VSO-languages and head-initial oriented languages with a head-final verb phrase.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Word Order Typology
    CAS LX 500 Topics: Language Universals 2a. Word order Fall 2010, September 7 1 Word order typology 1.1 Relative order of S, O, and V Relative order of S, O, and V Typologically, it is common to describe languages in terms of the relative order of the subject (S), the object (O), and the verb (V). This gives rise to six logically possible types. Of these SOV and SVO are the most common, VSO is somewhat common—VOS, OVS, and OSV are much more rare. (1) Hasan ok¨ uz-¨ u¨ aldı Hasan ox-ACC bought ‘Hasan bought the ox.’ Turkish SOV (2) The farmer killed the duckling English SVO (3) Lladdodd y ddraig y dyn. killed the dragon the man ‘The dragon killed the man.’ Welsh VSO Relative order of S, O, and V (4) Nahita ny mpianatra ny vehivavy. saw the student the woman ‘The woman saw the student.’ Malagasy VOS (5) Toto yaho1sye kamara. man it-grabbed-him jaguar ‘The jaguar grabbed the man.’ Hixkaryana OVS 1.2 Issues in determining word order What’s the basic word order? What’s the subject? There is agreement as to the basic word order of Turkish, Welsh, English, Mala- gasy, and Hixkaryana—but it is not always clear. In some languages, it seems like any permutation of the words is equally good, any preferences being very slight. 1 Also—what is the “subject”? Sometimes languages split on usual criteria for identifying a subject. (Ergative case pattern marks subjects of transitives differ- ently than subjects of intransitives, syntactic tests like verb agreement don’t always work, confounds with agent- and topic-hood.) If some objects precede and some follow the verb Exotic languages like French have some objects preceding the verb, while oth- ers follow it.
    [Show full text]