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Word order
| Linguistic typology |
|---|
| Morphological |
| Morphosyntactic |
| Word order |
| Lexicon |
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how languages employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic sub-domains are also of interest. The primary word orders that are of interest are
- the constituent order of a clause, namely the relative order of subject, object, and verb;
- the order of modifiers (adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, possessives, and adjuncts) in a noun phrase;
- the order of adverbials.
Some languages use relatively fixed word order, often relying on the order of constituents to convey grammatical information. Other languages—often those that convey grammatical information through inflection—allow more flexible word order, which can be used to encode pragmatic information, such as topicalisation or focus. However, even languages with flexible word order have a preferred or basic word order,[1] with other word orders considered "marked".[2]
Constituent word order is defined in terms of a finite verb (V) in combination with two arguments, namely the subject (S), and object (O).[3][4][5][6] Subject and object are here understood to be nouns, since pronouns often tend to display different word order properties.[7][8] Thus, a transitive sentence has six logically possible basic word orders:
- about 45% of the world's languages deploy subject–object–verb order (SOV);
- about 42% of the world's languages deploy subject–verb–object order (SVO);
- a smaller fraction of languages deploy verb–subject–object (VSO) order;
- the remaining three arrangements are rarer: verb–object–subject (VOS) is slightly more common than object–verb–subject (OVS), and object–subject–verb (OSV) is the rarest by a significant margin.[9]
- ^ Comrie, Bernard. (1981). Language universals and linguistic typology: syntax and morphology (2nd ed). University of Chicago Press, Chicago
- ^ Sakel, Jeanette (2015). Study Skills for Linguistics. Routledge. p. 61. ISBN 9781317530107.
- ^ Hengeveld, Kees (1992). Non-verbal predication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-013713-5.
- ^ Sasse, Hans-Jürgen (1993). "Das Nomen – eine universale Kategorie?" [The noun – a universal category?]. STUF - Language Typology and Universals (in German). 46 (1–4). doi:10.1524/stuf.1993.46.14.187. S2CID 192204875.
- ^ Rijkhoff, Jan (November 2007). "Word Classes: Word Classes". Language and Linguistics Compass. 1 (6): 709–726. doi:10.1111/j.1749-818X.2007.00030.x. S2CID 5404720.
- ^ Rijkhoff, Jan (2004), The Noun Phrase, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-926964-5.
- ^ Greenberg, Joseph H. (1963). "Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements" (PDF). In Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.). Universals of Human Language. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. pp. 73–113. doi:10.1515/9781503623217-005. ISBN 9781503623217. S2CID 2675113.
- ^ Dryer, Matthew S. (2013). "Order of Subject, Object and Verb". In Dryer, Matthew S.; Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- ^ Tomlin, Russel S. (1986). Basic Word Order: Functional Principles. London: Croom Helm. ISBN 0-415-72357-4.
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