Big Star, Little Star
1 the problem with basic alignments
candidates can violate immediate ordering constraints (precedence/subsequence) in one
of two ways
being on the wrong side (= side violation)
being too far from the host (= adjacency violation)
xPy
... yxz ... *
... xzy ... *
this is fine if the relevant element can win a competition as it will immediately
precede or follow the host
the issue is: what happens to losers?
do they stay on the right side, but accept a non-adjacent position (=elbowing)?
do they swap sides and stay close to the host (=side switching)?
The data seem to support elbowing:
the old man
the determiner is elbowed to the left by the adjective
* old man the
give Mary the money
the direct object is elbowed to the right by the indirect
object
* the money give Mary
2 a possible solution
given that there are two ways to violate a constraint and that only one of these ways is
acceptable, suppose we claim that the two cases involve different types of violation:
adjacency violation  incurs a violation marked by * (little star)
side violation  incurs a penalty marked by  (big star)
a big star violation is worse than any number of little star violations:
xayb ...
xaby ,,,
xab ... y
abyx ...
xPy
*
**
** ...
!
This predicts that elbowing is the universal strategy for dealing with losers
3 Universal word order phenomena
of the 6 possible orders of the 3 basic elements of a sentence, all are attested
however, some are more frequent than the others
SOV = 45%
SVO = 42%
96% = SO
VSO = 9%
VOS = 3%
OVS = 1% (some uncertainty on correctness of analysis)
OSV = <1%
the uncertainty of OVS as a basic word order follows from the fact that the data is not
straightforward
Hixkaryana allows various word orders and the verb is marked to indicate
which argument is subject and object.
there is a hierarchy 3rd > 1st > 2nd: if the subject is higher in this hierarchy than
the object, then one morpheme is used and if it is lower then another morpheme
is used
in cases where they are the same, word order distinguishes them
in this case the object is the argument in front of the verb and the subject is after
3rd V 3rd
(e.g. man eat jaguar) = O V S = the jaguar eats the man
on the basis of this, it is argued that OVS is the basic word order and others are
derived
it also needs to be considered that this statistical analysis forces some round pegs into
square holes.
there are many languages which have questionable status with regard to this
typology
Hungarian is not easily categorised as any of these
all 6 possibilities are quite frequent (but what has frequency got to do with it)
there is no syntactic reason to think that the subject is given any special
treatment, as opposed to other arguments (i.e. perhaps Hungarian has no
subject
Note: thematic role, Case, discourse properties are not the same as subject
not all subjects are agents
not all subject are nominative
not all subjects are topics
possible the theoretically most justified assumption is that Hungarian has a V
arg basic word order, all others being derived from this
this follows from the fact that all pre-verbal positions are associated with a
particular interpretation, but post verbal positions are free
A number of languages show even greater word order freedom than Hungarian
Warlbiri, an Australian language, is known to have almost totally free word
order, with the exception that the auxiliary is in second position
4 Possible account in AS of word order patterns
Is ‘subject’ basic?
a number of approaches argue that the notion subject is derived
the subject is just an argument that happens to occupy a certain position
hence different arguments can be subjects under different conditions
others argue that it is a basic notion of human grammars
that different arguments are associated with subject in different constructions is a
matter of grammatical process
for present purposes we will assume that subject is assigned in the input and hence is
subject to possible constraints
this might be justified on the observation that the subject is usually an argument,
though it is an argument given special treatment
other arguments typically have a position different from the subject
in SVO languages, the only argument to precede the verb is the subject, all
others follow
John saw Mary
SVO
He reacted to the news
SVPP
I gave the money to Mary
SVOPP
I said he left
SVIP
I promised him that I would go
SVOIP
it seems to me that he is wise
SVPPIP
so whichever argument is assigned to the subject is given special treatment
However, it has to be accepted that the subject is also usually an argument
and hence it will also be subject to whatever conditions apply to arguments
The analysis
sP/Fp subject precedes/follows predicate
aP/Fp argument precede/follows predicate (i.e. head initial/head final
distinction)
Languages where there is no apparent subject
we wouldn’t want to say that such languages have no subject in the input
inputs should be universal
so the lack of the subject must be grammatical
the obvious suggestion is that the feature is deleted
this can be achieved by the following ranking
sPp > sFp > Faith(sub)
SVO
this is easy to achieve
sPp > sFp
i.e. subject first language
aFp > aPp
i.e. arguments in general follow the predicate
sPp > aFp
i.e. although the subject is an argument, it still comes first
Faith(sub) > sPp/sFp the subject feature does not delete
5 Problems
OVS is just as easy to produce (just opposite rankings) and so it is not easy to see why
SVO is more frequent than OVS
SOV and VOS word orders cannot be achieved
this is because of harmonic binding
a candidate is harmonically bound if there is another candidate which does
equally well/badly or better on all constraints
sPp
OSV
SOV *
VSO 
VOS 
sFp aPp

*

*


*
aFp


*
*
it doesn’t matter which order the constraints are in, OSV will always beat SVO and
VSO will always beat VOS
therefore SOV and VOS can never be grammatical
VOS is not a very common language – but it is more common than VSO
SOV is the most common language type!!!
6 Possible solutions
introduce a sP/Fo constraint
this might be the basis of an account for why S precedes O in most of the world’s
languages
though it is not clear why sPo should be more frequently ranked above sFo
this necessitates that we assume that object is a universal feature, assigned in the
input
but there is little reason to believe that objects are given any special treatment
in general objects are DP arguments that are not subjects