A Typological Approach to Word Order and Information Processing: English as a SVO Language

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to examine a relation between word order and language processing and identify language-specific features that affect the degree of accessibility to information structure in a SVO word order. The findings from this study reveal that subject-prominent mechanisms in English, such as clefting structures, dummy subjects, existential sentences, non-agentive subjects, raising constructions, and passive voices, are well motivated for the purpose of maximizing language-use efficiency. In addition, passive constructions and non-agentive subjects are strategically exploited for the purpose of promoting high accessibility to a rigid SVO sequence and improving textual coherence. Furthermore, the tendency towards short–long ordering in SVO languages like English is predominant, and thus the language-specific maxims, such as ‘end-focus’, ‘end-weight’, and ‘dependency length minimization’, are well observed in the use of left-branching and right-branching modifiers in English for the purpose of increasing the efficiency of information processing. Finally, this study suggests that the language-specific structures, patterns, devices, or principles that are available in SVO word order seem to be optimized for facilitating information processing.