Interactions Among Morphology, Word Order, and Syntactic Directionality: Evidence from 55 Languages.

Slavic languages are generally assumed to possess rich morphological features with free syntactic word order. Exploring this complexity trade-off can help us better understand the relationship between morphology and syntax within natural languages. However, few quantitative investigations have been carried out into this relationship within Slavic languages. Based on 34 annotated corpora from Universal Dependencies, this paper paid special attention to the correlations between morphology and syntax within Slavic languages by applying two metrics of morphological richness and two of word order freedom, respectively. Our findings are as follows. First, the quantitative metrics adopted can well capture the distributions of morphological richness and word order freedom of languages. Second, the metrics can corroborate the correlation between morphological richness and word order freedom. Within Slavic languages, this correlation is moderate and statistically significant. Precisely, the richer the morphology, the less strict the word order. Third, Slavic languages can be clustered into three subgroups based on classification models. Most importantly, ancient Slavic languages are characterized by richer morphology and more flexible word order than modern ones. Fourth, as two possible disturbing factors, corpus size does not greatly affect the results of the metrics, whereas corpus genre does play an important part in the measurements of word order freedom. Specifically, the word order of formal written genres tends to be more rigid than that of informal written and spoken ones. Overall, based on annotated corpora, the results verify the negative correlation between morphological richness and word order rigidity within Slavic languages, which might shed light on the dynamic relations between morphology and syntax of natural languages and provide quantitative instantiations of how languages encode lexical and syntactic information for the purpose of efficient communication.

Effects of word order and morphological information on Japanese sentence comprehension in nonfluent/agrammatic variant of primary progressive aphasia

Background: Comprehension of semantically reversible sentences is often impaired in Broca's aphasia. When the arguments in such sentences are in derived order, they are more difficult to comprehend than when they are not. Most studies on this topic are of English, a morphologically poor language; only a few experiments have examined sentence comprehension in case-marking languages. These studies tested sentences in which word order was varied while case was kept constant. Their results suggest that case does not improve comprehension of derived order sentences. The present study is on the comprehension of semantically reversible sentences in Turkish Broca's aphasia. Turkish, with its flexible word order and rich case morphology, is well suited to this investigation because there is an interaction between word order and case, which is known to influence sentence production in this aphasia type (Yarbay Duman, Aygen, & Bastiaanse, 2008). Aims: The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of word order and case information on the auditory comprehension of semantically reversible sentences in Turkish Broca's aphasia to find out whether an interaction between word order and case, similar to the one found in production, can be observed in sentence comprehension. Methods & Procedures: A comprehension test with five reversible sentence types (base order active sentences, sentences with object scrambling, subject relatives, object relatives, and passives) was developed. Sentences in base and derived word order varied in their use of case. Sentences with base case (subject = nominative; object = accusative) and non-base case were included to evaluate the interplay between word order and case separately. Outcomes & Results: The results showed that both word order and case influenced sentence comprehension. Clauses were comprehended best when there was both base (unambiguous) case and base word order information (base order active sentences). Performance dropped if there was base case information but derived word order (object scrambling and subject relatives). When there was neither base case information nor base word order (object relatives and passives), clauses were comprehended least well. Conclusions: The sentence comprehension deficit in Turkish Broca's aphasia is due to a problem in assigning thematic roles to the noun phrases by integrating syntactic word order and case information. Such an integration problem is in line with previous findings on sentence production in Turkish and the Integration Problem Hypothesis (IPH: Yarbay Duman, 2009).

Agrammatism: A Cross-Linguistic Clinical Perspective

In the case of Breton, lots of attempts were made to determine its historically grown word order. Proposals in this regard range from VSO (Timm) over V2 (Schafer) to SVO (Varin). This paper shows that traditional Breton has a preference for V2 positioning within a VSO-type framework. Lower Sorbian is a language with a rich morphology and consequently shows a relatively flexible word order. However, in unmarked declarative sentences it is normally the subject which occurs in sentence-initial position whereas the verb does not seem to prefer any specific position. Having determined the word order in the traditional varieties of Breton and Lower Sorbian, an outlook will be given on potential changes of their actual word order under language contact.

This cross-linguistic study examined inflectional morphology and word order in Moroccan Arabic (MA) and English-speaking persons with agrammatic aphasia (PWAA). MA has rich verbal morphology and flexible word order, whereas English has limited morphology and rigid order, providing a strong test of accounts of agrammatism. The closed-class deficit hypothesis predicts selective impairment of inflections with preserved word order, while the syntactic deficit hypothesis (SDH) attributes the disorder to a syntactic impairment affecting both domains. Speech from nine MA speakers (four PWAA, five typical participants (TP)) and ten English speakers (five PWAA, five TP) was analyzed. In both languages, PWAA showed deficits in morphology and word order, supporting the SDH. Severity patterns differed: MA-speaking PWAA trended toward greater morphological impairment, whereas English-speaking PWAA showed greater word order disruption. MA-speaking PWAA also deviated from TP’s canonical VSO pattern, suggesting compensatory subject-initial strategies. Findings support a core syntactic deficit modulated by language typology.

Reviewed by: Word-order based grammar by Eva Koktova Agustinus Gianto Word-order based grammar. By Eva Koktova. (Trends in linguistics: Studies and monographs 121.) Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1999. Pp. xv, 389. Koktova’s monograph offers a novel theory of grammar which purports to handle questions that neither Chomskyan generativism nor Prague functionalism has adequately answered. To be sure, Kconsiders deep and surface structures, recursion, and lexical valency in treating word-order (Ch. 2), adverbial modification (Ch. 3), wh-extraction (Ch. 4), anaphora (Ch. 5), and formalization (Ch. 6). This book grew out of her 1986 monograph on sentence adverbials and other papers appearing in Theoretical linguistics in 1987, 1992, 1996, and 1997. In the present work K’s assessment of other proposals has become somewhat more articulate. K posits five types of word order (WO) in Ch. 2, namely, (1) fixed deep WO reflected in the fixed order of the elements in the information structure and basic sentence; (2) free deep WO, the opposite of the first type; (3) fixed surface WO, reflecting Joseph Greenberg’s parameters and constraints; (4) free surface WO corresponding to free deep WO or to fixed surface WO which is ‘relaxed’ by the mechanism of topicalization and focalization; (5) free surface WO not corresponding to deep WO. The last type is the major type. The actual order here is regulated by pragmatic factors called surface segmentation and pulsation. These notions are among K’s original contributions. Ch. 3 argues that sentence adverbials (surprisingly), modal adverbs (probably), focalizers (only), negators, and interjections are generated by a new type of adverbial modification which Kcalls ‘modification of attitude’. Their sequence, as in surprisingly probably not only, reflects the deep order and information structure. The treatment of wh-elements in Ch. 4 is perhaps the best part of the book. Here K convincingly demonstrates how these elements are universally extractable. When extracted, they invariably maintain their information status as focus. Likewise, non wh-elements will keep their information status as topic or focus. This will in turn provide an explanation for split focus or topic. K also proposes a subcategorization of empty categories and pronouns in an effort to account for their surface manifestation as nominals. This subcategorization is based on the position of the element as a node in the deep representation and on its status as sentence topic or focus. Ch. 5 discusses anaphora in complex and simple sentences besides anaphora in general. The first is almost unrestricted simply because the antecedent and the anaphoric element are found in different clauses, which is not the case in simple sentences where several restrictions apply. Here and at the phrase level, ease in the processing of information, rather than syntax, seems to be the guiding principle. Even nonconfigurational languages like Czech and Russian are said to follow this principle. K shows in Ch. 6 how the components of her grammar fit together in a formal system and illustrates its use in elucidating Czech surface word-order. A four-page concluding chapter reiterates the insights shared throughout this forbiddingly ambitious book. Agustinus Gianto Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome Copyright © 2001 Linguistic Society of America

One aspect in which languages vary is their differing patterns of word ordering in sentences. Some languages follow a restrictive word order, whereas others allow a flexible word order that does not affect the semantics of the text. In the literature, the Arabic language is deemed one of the flexible or “free word order” languages, which allow both VSO and SVO word orders without changing a clause’s meaning. The present study aims to identify the pragmatic (morpholexical and discourse) factors that play a significant role in determining the variable subject-verb word order in spoken Saudi Arabic. A corpus-based approach was taken by collecting a sufficient amount of natural spoken Saudi utterances for analysis. The corpus contains data collected from six recorded Saudi Arabic TV interviews with Saudi personalities in which the guests related personal stories about their social and practical lives. A classification system proposed by Owens et al. (2009) was adopted as a study tool to distinguish between the diverse factors that may predict the variant word order in spoken Saudi Arabic and to determine whether any relationship exists between such factors. The study found that the distributions of SV and VS word orders in spoken Saudi Arabic are similar, with a slightly higher percentage in SV word order (58% SV vs. 42% VS), and that the morpholexical class of subjects significantly predicts word order. The findings also indicate that discourse-pragmatic functions play an important role in predicting word order.

Reviewed by: The syntax of Russian by John Frederick Bailyn Egor Tsedryk John Frederick Bailyn. The syntax of Russian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. xvii + 373 pp. Rich case morphology and word order flexibility are two interrelated properties of Russian that have long intrigued syntacticians from various schools and traditions. In The syntax of Russian, Bailyn dismisses anything that could potentially be qualified as “optional” or “non-configurational” in Russian. In a nutshell, he claims that: (i) Russian has the same major constituents as English, including verb phrase (VP) and determiner phrase (DP); (ii) case marking is a by-product of syntactic configurations, and it is attributed to a limited number of categories; (iii) basic word order is Subject-Verb-Object (SVO), while other patterns are derived by movement; (iv) discourse-related movement occurs at the level of Functional Form,1 which is “a point of interface between linguistic and non-linguistic [discursive] systems” (320). As Bailyn notes in the preface, his general goal is to describe the main structural properties of modern Russian. Thus, he targets a large readership, including anyone interested in Russian or in syntax more generally. At the same time he has a narrower goal of highlighting those aspects of Russian that represent a particular interest in current syntactic theory. In my opinion, this book is more successful in achieving its narrower goal. A reader who does not have a back-ground in minimalism, or more generally in generative syntax, may find it difficult to follow, especially parts two and three. The book contains seven chapters organized into three parts. The first part (Basic configurations, chapters 1–3) follows the logic of an introductory textbook in syntax: it outlines the internal structure of phrases, describes constituency tests applicable to Russian, and presents the minimal structure of main and subordinate clauses. The second two parts (Case, chapters 4–5, and Word order, chapters 6–7) reveal the syntactic nature of core cases (Nominative, Accusative, Dative, [End Page 341] Genitive, and Instrumental) and uncover movement processes deriving various word order patterns in Russian. In the remainder of this review I will first go through each chapter, highlighting the key ideas, claims, and assumptions. Then I will provide my comments, focusing on specific issues that caught my attention, and I will finish with a general assessment of the book. 1. Chapter Summary Chapter 1 (Verb phrases, 3–33) presents Bailyn’s assumptions about phrase structure, focusing on selectional properties of verbs and their extended projections. Bailyn follows Adger (2003) in assuming that the basic syntactic operation Merge is triggered by the necessity to eliminate an uninterpretable categorial feature. This chapter also presents classical constituency tests, such as coordination, fronting, and ellipsis, which motivate the existence of VP. Binding tests further support a constituent structure, in which the subject asymmetrically c-commands the object. In addition, Bailyn illustrates the difference between arguments and adjuncts and at the end of the chapter provides the minimal sentence structure for Russian. Chapter 2 (Nominal phrases, 34–72) extends the idea of a hierarchical structure to the nominal domain. Special attention is paid to adnominal complements expressing possession, identification, and event participants, such as Agent and Theme. As expected, nominalizations, featuring a variety of adnominal Genitives and Obliques, constitute the bulk of the discussion on argument structure. Another important theme of this chapter is the DP-hypothesis. Even though Russian is an article-less language, Bailyn supports this hypothesis by analyzing a variety of prenominal elements such as demonstratives, possessives, numerals, and quantifiers. He also discusses the data that could potentially refute it (e.g., left-branch extraction, following Bošković 2005), and suggests an account in terms of an enriched functional structure of Russian DPs (65). Finally, Bailyn presents his analysis of adjectival modification, focusing on long and short form adjectives. Chapter 3 (Types of clauses, 73–119) closes the first part of the book, offering a detailed overview of Russian clauses. It is subdivided into five parts: (i) independent declarative, interrogative, and imperative clauses; (ii) subordinate indicative and subjunctive clauses, (iii) wh-structures, (iv) small clauses, infinitives, and gerunds, and (v) impersonals. [End Page 342] Bailyn starts with a presentation of the...

This research explores the syntactic and pragmatic aspects that condition word order flexibility in Pashto and English, comparing how the two languages communicate emphasis, focus, and topicalization. This paper compares the flexibility of sentence structure allowed by Pashto’s case-marking system in comparison to English’s rigid SVO word order, drawing on data from the Pashto National Corpus (2022) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The findings reveals that Pashto facilitates much more fluid rearrangements according to pragmatic needs for sentence parts, such as focusing on the subject, object, or verb, while in English, auxiliary structures and cleft sentences are used to achieve the same. This research concluded that though both languages use pragmatic variables for adjusting word order, Pashto’s case-marking system has a syntactic advantage which makes word order changes more fluid and easier. This study highlights the syntactic restrictions in English that call for additional structural mechanisms in order to modify word order. These findings are helpful for understanding of cross-linguistic syntax and pragmatic variations as well as how syntactic structures and communication needs affect word order flexibility.

BackgroundIn the literature of sentence production, both short-before-long and long-before-short word order tendencies have been observed across languages. Specifically, SVO languages such as English show the short-before-long noun phrase (NP) shift, placing heavy NPs near the end of the sentence; on the other hand, verb-final languages such as Japanese and Korean show the long-before-short NP shift, placing heavy NPs earlier in the sentence. In this paper, we examine the effects of NP weight on word order variation in Mandarin Chinese, which not only has a predominantly SVO word order but also allows a grammaticalized SOV construction (i.e., the ba construction).MethodsWe conducted a corpus analysis with two verb-specific datasets extracted from the 10 million-word Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese (Version 5.0; Chen et. al., Proceeding of the 11th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, 1996). Each dataset contained more than 900 sentences, in either SVO or ba construction and possible to be converted to the other word order without changing sentence meaning. Generalized mixed-effects models were built to examine the effect of NP weight on the surface word order (SVO vs. ba), while controlling for other factors that are also known to influence the SVO-ba alternation (e.g., verb complement, animacy, and givenness of the object NP, sentence structure, and structural parallelism in the context). The accuracy of the modeling results was inspected by comparing the word order predictions made by the models with both actual word orders observed in the corpus and naturalness ratings of alternative word orders by native speakers in behavioral experiments.ResultsOur results show a U-shaped NP weight effect on SVO-ba alternation, in that both very short and very long NPs are more likely to be shifted to preverbal positions than NPs with medium weight. These results provide evidence that both conceptual and positional factors are operating in the preverbal domain in Mandarin.ConclusionTaken together with previous findings of positional factors operating in the postverbal domain in Mandarin, our results suggest that the relative sensitivity to conceptual and positional factors can vary within a language. We discuss findings in the framework of the sentence production model.

Language comprehension relies on integrating the perceived utterance with prior expectations. Previous investigations of expectations about sentence structure (the structural prior) have found that comprehenders often interpret rare constructions nonliterally. However, this work has mostly relied on analytic languages like English, where word order is the main way to indicate syntactic relations in the sentence. This raises the possibility that the structural prior over word order is not a universal part of the sentence processing toolkit, but rather a tool acquired only by speakers of languages where word order has special importance as the main source of syntactic information in the sentence. Moving away from English to make conclusions about more general cognitive strategies (Blasi et al., 2022), we investigate whether the structural prior over word order is a part of language processing more universally using Hindi and Russian, synthetic languages with flexible word order. We conducted two studies in Hindi (Ns = 50, 57, the latter preregistered) and three studies with the same materials, translated, in Russian (Ns = 50, 100, 100, all preregistered), manipulating plausibility and structural frequency. Structural frequency was manipulated by comparing simple clauses with the canonical word order (subject-object-verb in Hindi, subject-verb-object in Russian) to ones with a noncanonical (low frequency) word order (object-subject-verb in Hindi, object-verb-subject in Russian). We found that noncanonical sentences were interpreted nonliterally more often than canonical sentences, even though we used flexible-word-order languages. We conclude that the structural prior over word order is always evaluated in language processing, regardless of language type. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Aramaic is a language affiliated with the north-west Semitic languages, which include Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Hebrew. A common characteristic of Semitic languages is the initial position of the verb within the sentence. However, the word order in Biblical Aramaic, the formal Aramaic language is very different from that of the north-west Semitic languages. This in-depth study examines all the sentences in Biblical Aramaic, specifically the 1002 Biblical Aramaic clauses, in order to explore word order. Sentence types (verbal, nominal, participial, and HAVA [=to be] sentences, etc.), verb forms, subject-predicate-object word order, descriptive and colloquial styles, tense, independent and subordinate clauses, etc. were considered.BR The greatest differences appear in the word orders of verbal sentences. All possible word orders, i.e. all the six word orders appear in sentences where subject, verb, and object are included, while the word orders of VO and OV account for almost half of the samples when the orders of verbs and objects are considered. Thus, verbal sentences in Biblical Aramaic can be said to have flexible word orders.BR To determine what factors influence word order in Biblical Aramaic, we have employed various parameters in our investigations, and made comparisons with the word orders of Biblical Hebrew, Akkadian and Ugaritic languages, Arabic, and Sumerian, the most ancient language. However, no linguistic factors were discovered, and thus it was noted that examining geographic and historical factors was necessary. We conclude that movement by the Aramaic people following the national migration policy of the Neo-Assyrian Empire resulted in Biblical Aramaic or formal Aramaic having the flexible word order, as the original ancient Aramaic from the eastern area of Mesopotamia received influence from the Akkadian language used in the area to where migration took place.

While natural languages differ widely in both canonical word order and word order flexibility, their word orders still follow shared cross-linguistic statistical patterns, often attributed to functional pressures. In the effort to identify these pressures, prior work has compared real and counterfactual word orders. Yet one functional pressure has been overlooked in such investigations: The uniform information density (UID) hypothesis, which holds that information should be spread evenly throughout an utterance. Here, we ask whether a pressure for UID may have influenced word order patterns cross-linguistically. To this end, we use computational models to test whether real orders lead to greater information uniformity than counterfactual orders. In our empirical study of 10 typologically diverse languages, we find that: (i) among SVO languages, real word orders consistently have greater uniformity than reverse word orders, and (ii) only linguistically implausible counterfactual orders consistently exceed the uniformity of real orders. These findings are compatible with a pressure for information uniformity in the development and usage of natural languages.1

The complexity trade-off hypothesis suggests a balance between different linguistic features across human languages. This study investigates this hypothesis by quantitatively examining the evolution from Latin to Modern Romance languages. We focus on the trade-off between morphological richness and word order freedom, providing insights into their dynamic interrelations during linguistic evolution. Our analysis demonstrates that morphological richness and word order freedom are distributed along a continuum, with Latin exhibiting higher morphological complexity and freer word order and Modern Romance languages having lower morphological richness and more rigid word order. This evolution reflects the principles of efficiency in complex adaptive systems, showing a significant complexity trade-off where increases in one feature often result in decreases in the other. These findings indicate the adaptive nature of linguistic systems and offer valuable insights for diachronic typological research, enhancing our understanding of the complexity trade-off from a quantitative perspective.