Language typology
Basic word order
The two types of syntactic typology
syntactic typology
typology on
word order types
contentive typology
alignment patterns
What is basic word order?
• basic word order at the clausal level consists of
three major parts: Subject (S), Object (O) and
Verb (V)
• basic word order can be found in indicative
transitive clauses
• basic word order = the ordering of the 3 major
constituents (S, O and V)
A definition of basic word order
[It is generally thought that] basic word order
at the clausal level is found in stylistically
neutral, independent, indicative clauses with
full noun phrase (NP) participants, where the
subject is definite, agentive and human, the
object is a definite semantic patient, and the
verb represents an action, not a state or an
event.” (Siewierska 1988: 8. in Song 2001:
49.)
Basic word order types
• How can these 3 elements (S,O,V) appear in a
clause?
• How many ordering types are possible?
• There are 6 logically possible ways of
ordering:
(1) Turkish (Comrie 1981:81-82.) (SOV)
Hasan öküz-ü
aldi.
Hasan ox-ACC
bought
’Hasan bought an ox.’
(2) English (SVO)
The farmer killed the duckling.
(3) Welsh (VSO)
Lladdodd y ddraig y dyn.
killed
the dragon the man’
’The dragon killed the man.’
(4) Malagasy (VOS)
Nahita ny mpianatra ny vehivavy.
saw the student the woman
’The woman saw the student.’
(5) Hyxkariana (OVS)
Toto yahosiye kamara.
man grabbed jaguar
‘The jaguar grabbed the man.’
(6) Nadëb (Song 2001: 2.)
samÚÚy
yi
(OSV)
qa-wù
howler-monkey people eat
‘People eat howler-monkeys.’
• As it can be seen there are cross-linguistic
examples of all 6 types
• SOV, SVO, VSO, VOS, OVS and OSV
Some criteria about defining basic word order
• pragmatic neutrality – perhaps the most important
• textual frequency – the more frequent is the basic,
but: the most frequent word order may vary from text
to text depending on different text types – it isn’t a
very reliable parameter
• formal markedness – the unmarked is the basic –
exceptions from different languages – this is the most
unreliable parameter
• these parameters are irrelevant to flexible word order
languages
Non-clausal patterns
• basic word order is also found in non-clausal patterns
(i.e. in phrases)
• e.g. ordering of:
• adposition (Adp) and noun (N)
• genitive (G) and noun (N)
• relative clause (Rel) and noun (N)
• What else could be a pattern like these?
• adjective (A) and noun (N)
• article (Art) and noun (N)
• auxiliary verb (Aux) and main verb (V)
Inception of word order typology
• Joseph H. Greenberg – 1963, the first work on
basic word order from a typological viewpoint
• he established a new type of universal
statement, the implicational universal
• e.g. x  y (read: if the x exists, than this
implies the existence of y)
• Greenberg’s (45) implications are unilateral!- x
y≠yx
Some greenbergian universal statements
UNIVERSAL 1
„ In declarative sentences with nominal subject and object the
dominant order is almost always one in which the subject
precedes the object.”
UNIVERSAL 2
„In languages with prepositions, the genitive almost always
follows the governing noun, while in languages with
postpositions it almost always precedes.”
UNIVERSAL 3
„Languages with dominant VSO order are always prepositional.”
UNIVERSAL 27
„If a language is exclusively suffixing, it is postpositional; if it is
exclusively prefixing, it is prepositional.” (Greenberg 1963. in
Song 2001: 53-55.)
Examples for
UNIVERSAL 1
A fiú kenyeret eszik. Poika syö leipää. ‘The boy is eating bread.’
(SO)
UNIVERSAL 2
a fa alatt/puun alla ‘under the tree’; az anya lánya/äidin tytär ‘the
girl of the mother’ (NPp&GN)
UNIVERSAL 25
Hungarian and Finnish are both suffixing languages and the most
frequently used adposition types are postpositions.
Do you think that these universal statements exist in
your native language?
Examples?
Reflections on universal 1
• Universal 1 says that in languages with nominal
subject and object the ordering is SO.
• Referring to universal 1 one has to say that OS order
is almost impossible.
• This means that the existance of VOS, OVS and OSV
languages is almost impossible.
• BUT: there are data opposed to this universal
• AND: in universal 1 it is said that the S almost
always precedes the O – this is not an exceptionless
universal
• It has been pointed out that the number of VOS, OVS
and OSV languages is quite reduced (there are about
4-8 OVS languages. cf. WALS)
Tripartite system
• Analyse of the three languages in which the S
precedes the O – SOV, SVO, VSO
• Verb based typology: serializing ordering types
based on the position of verb
• VSO – verb in the first position relative to the
position of S and O
• SVO – verb is in the second position
• SOV – verb is in the final position
• This verb based typology had a main role in
further research
The verb based typology
• W.P. Lehmann (1973) – Fundamental Principle of
Placement (FPP)
• the primary syntactic construction: is the verb and the
object
• they are ‘primary concomitants’ of each other in the
sentence
• subject is left out consideration in Lehmann’s work,
because subject is not so important part of the
sentence
• as an argue for this theory: subjectless sentences like
Lat. pluit ‘it rains’
• thus Greenberg’s tripartite system is reduced to OV
and VO word order types
The FPP
• The FPP says that: „…the modifiers are placed on the opposite
side of a basic constituent, V or O, from its primary
concomitant.” (cf. Song 2001: 56.)
• depending on whether the analyzed language is OV or VO
type, we can predict:in OV languages the verbal elements
(e.g. negation, causative,etc.) appear on the right side of the
verb, while nominal elements (e.g. genitive, adjective,
numeral) appear on the left side of the noun
• What can one predict about the position of verbal and nominal
elements in VO languages?
• in VO: verbal elements are placed on the left side of the verb,
whereas nominal elements are placed on the right side of the
noun
The FPP
• Lehmann has analyzed Greenberg’s data (a 30 language
sample) using the predictions of the FPP
• he has pointed out that on the basis of the FPP one could make
predictions about word order properties at the morphologic
level as well
• FPP does not use the distinction of heads (main parts) and
modifiers (dependent parts), FPP makes predictions about
word order, depending on the status of the modifiers (verbal or
nominal)
• there are a lot of languages which do not behave as the FPP
predicts, but Lehmann says that the so called ambivalent
languages are in a typological change from OV to VO or from
VO to OV (further research has pointed out that only the
former type of historical change is known)
An excercise
you have the following parameters:
OV, VO,
NA, AN,
V-vm, vm-V (where vm is ‘a verbal modifier’)
What is the ordering of N and A, V and vm in
OV and in VO languages?
AN & V-vm in OV
NA & vm-V in VO
Conclusion
• One has to consider the FPP as a
generalization about the greenbergian
universal statements
Venemann’s theory
• Th. Vennemann states that the subject has no
importance in the notion of basic bord order,
thus he uses the categories: OV and VO
• his aim is to make a general explanation about
Greenberg’s universal statements
• Vennemann’s theory is the Principle of Natural
Serialization (PNS) which can be seen as a
generalization on greenbergian universals
• the basis of the explanation is categorial
analogy
Some features of the PNS
• The PNS states that: the
order of operators (i.e.
modifiers or dependent
parts) and operands (i.e.
modified or head parts)
tends to be serialized in
one direction
• in practice: operators
before operands OR
operands before
operators
operator {operand}
operator [operand]
in OV
operand [operator]
in VO
PNS
• the following cathegories are used in the PNS (Vennemann 1974)
OPERATOR
OPERAND
object
adverbial
main verb
adjective
relative clause
genitive
numeral
determiner
adjective
standard of comparison
noun phrase
verb
verb
auxiliary
noun
noun
noun
noun
noun
comparison marker
comparative adjective
adposition
Some critical notes about the PNS
• the status of some categories are questionable
• for instance: the auxiliary (Aux) is regarded as a verbal modifier in
traditional grammar, but in the PNS Aux is the head of the content (main)
verb
• this system is reduced correlated to Greenberg’s work
• Vennemann’s implications are bilateral: pq = qp
• Greenberg (UNIVERSAL 3): Languages with dominant VSO order are
always prepositional.
• How can we read this universal according to the PNS?
• VO&Pr = OV&Pp
• In Greenberg’s work one could make distinctions about universals: there
are weak and strong ones BUT: the PNS cannot make distinctions like
these
• BUT: Vennemann’s universals are statistical → if more than the half part of
the languages behave as the PNS predict then that feature is applicable for
generalization
Hawkins’ theory on word order
• his aim was to making language universals
exceptionless
• exceptionless universals help for
characterizing possible human language
• Hawkins states that statictical (restriceted)
universals can be converted into exceptionless
(unrestricted) universals
An example of converting
•
a.
b.
c.
(a)
(b)
(c)
•
Statistical universals:
Pr  (NA  NG)
Pr  (NDem  NA)
Pr  (NNum  NA)
if a language has preposition word order, then if the adjective follows the
noun, the genitive follows the noun
if a language has preposition word order, then if the demonstrative
determiner follows the noun, the adjective follows the noun
if a language has preposition word order, then if the numeral followsthe
noun, the adjective follows the noun
Exceptionless universals:
a.
b.
Pr & -SVO  (NDem  NG)
Pr & -SVO  (NNunm  NG)
•
Hawkins creates exceptionless universals by increasing the
conditioning property from one to two
The HSP
•
Hawkins found that only 7 of the 32 mathematically
possible co-occurances of the five nominal
modifiers ar attested in Greenberg’s data and in his
own as well
a. Pr & NDem & NNum & NA & NG & NRel
b. Pr & DemN & NNum & NA & NG & NRel
c. Pr & NDem & NumN & NA & NG & NRel
d. Pr & DemN & NumN & NA & NG & NRel
e. Pr & DemN & NumN & AN & NG & NRel
f. Pr & DemN & NumN & AN & GN & NRel
g. Pr & DemN & NumN & AN & GN & RelN
The HSP
• e.g. if the Rel is placed before the noun then the G, A,
Num, Det are placed as well
• conclusion: the nominal modifiers are placed before
the N „in a fixed and predictable pattern: first the
demonstrative determiner or the numeral, then both,
then the adjective, then the genitive, finally the
relative clause” (Hawkins 1983: 75)
• H. predicts that modifiers behave so preciesly
because some modifiers are heavier or lighter than
others, and because heavier modifiers tend to occur to
the right of lighter ones
• E.g. the G is heavier than the Num
The HSP
• Heaviness Serialization Principle (HSP):
Rel ≥R G ≥R A ≥R {Dem, Num}
(the ≥R means ‘exhibits more or equal rightward
positioning relative to head noun across
languages’
BUT: the HSP alone cannot explain the
distribution of the nominal modifiers in
postpositional languages
Thus H. invokes another theory
The MP
• In order to explain the exceptions (of OV languages)
referring to the HSP, Hawkins invokes the Mobility
Principle (MP), which claims that the Dem, the Num,
and the A are more mobile than the G and the Rel,
and thus are able to move around their heads more
easily
• Mobility Principle (MP)
• {A, Dem, Num} ≥M {Rel, G}
( the ≥M means that exhibits greater or equal mobility
away from the adposition + NP serialization)
• the MP predicts when modifiers move around their
heads, they will move in that direction which is
expected by the HSP i. e. lighter elements on the left
Language frequency
• Greenberg uses in his universals the following words
for instance: ‘always, almost always, with
overwhelmingly greater than chance frequency’
• these expressions are meant to distinguish different
levels of language frequency
• this is a crucial point of the analyses, because the
number of exceptions that statistical universals can
accomodate must be limited
• in order to quantify language frequency more
objectively H. puts forward the PCCH
The PCCH
• Principle of Cross-Category Harmony
(PCCH):
„The more similar the position of operands
relative to their operators across different
operand categories considered pairwise (verb
in relation to adposition order, noun in relation
to adposition order, verb in relation to noun
order), the greater the percentage numbers of
exemplifying languages.” (Hawkins 1983:
134)
The PCCH
• In other words: if in a given co-occurance all
operators are serialized in one direction, then
that co-occurance is represented by more
languages.
• H. demonstrates some cognitive argues in
connection with the HSP: until the head is
processed, all its dependents have to be held in
short-time memory
• C.f. the cheese that the mouse that the cat
chased ate was rotten
Frequency of the different basic word order types
• The aim of Tomlin’s work (1986) was to
determine the frequency of the six basic word
order types and to provide an explanation of
the relative frquencies of these word order
types. (sample of 402 languages)
• SOV >SVO >VSO >VOS >OVS >OSV
• there was no statistical difference between the
frequency of SOV and SVO, neither in VOS
and OVS – thus:
• SOV =SVO >VSO >VOS=OVS >OSV
Three functional principles referring to frequency
1.
Theme First Principle (TFP): in clauses information that is
relatively more thematic precedes information that is less so
2. Animated First Principle (AFP): in simple basic transitive
clauses the NP which is more animated will precede the
NPs which are less animated
2a. Animacy Hierarchy:
human >other animate >inanimate
2b. Semantic Roles Hierarcy:
Agent >Instrumental >Benefactive/Dative >Patient
3. Verb-Object Bonding Principle (VOB): the object of a
transitive verb is more tightly bonded to the verb than is its
subject
These principles alone are not applicable for a general
explanation about basic word order frequencies
Summary of different theories about word order
• Greenberg – implicational universal statements
• Lehmann – OV-VO typology, FPP
• Vennemann – OV-VO typology, PNS
• Hawkins – HSP, MP, PCCH
• Tomlin – TFP,AFP,VOB