On Basic Word Order: The Comparative Framework, Meta-Definition and the Theoretical Motivation

Abstract

The basic word order is a core term in linguistic typology, and its different theoretical definitions have always been controversial. Firstly, this paper reviews the definitions of basic word order (and dominant order which is extremely related with basic word order) from various schools of thought and compares their definitions through the two levels of “inter-constituent” and “intra-constituent”. Secondly, a meta-definition of basic word order that does not deny or exclude other definitions are provided, namely, the basic word order is the order affect other word order(s) or the word order that holds relevance to predicting other word orders. Thirdly, this paper introduces two research approaches in the typological study of basic word order: causality-based research and correlation-based research. The former focus on the phylogenetical relation of word orders while the later focus on the statistical correlation between word orders. Depending on the different research approaches, the orientation of the definition of basic word order will also differ.