Word Order, Marking, and a Two-Dimensional Classification of Parts-of-Speech System Types

Abstract

Within the framework of Hengeveld's approach to parts-of-speech systems, this article shows that Vulanović's two-dimensional classification of main parts-of-speech system types applies both to the types presented by Hengeveld, Rijkhoff, and Siewierska in their 2004 paper and to the new types recently reported by Hengeveld and van Lier. Hengeveld and van Lier's principles for explaining the attested main parts-of-speech system types are also discussed and a set of simpler and more accurate principles is proposed. Furthermore, the two-dimensional classification is extended to intermediate parts-of-speech system types, which enables a linguistic data analysis of the kind done in Vulanović and Köhler's 2009 article. This analysis shows that the proportion of languages that use fixed word order and grammatical markers to facilitate disambiguation between different propositional functions depends on the type of the parts-of-speech system. The dependence is expressed by a three-dimensional generalization of the sigmoid.