Word Order Universals and Their Relationship to Structure

Abstract

Word order provides important clues to underlying syntactic structure. Despite great crosslinguistic variation, some generalizations are robust enough to inform theory development. This article reviews patterns of major clause elements and their derivation and discusses a pair of generalizations relating syntactic hierarchy to surface order—namely, the Universal 20 generalization (U20) and the Final-over-Final Constraint (FOFC). U20 rules out basic orders in which a lower modifier precedes a higher modifier to the left of the head, as in *adjective-demonstrative-noun (*Adj-Dem-N). FOFC rules out basic orders in which a head-final projection contains a head-initial one, as in *verb-object-auxiliary (*V-O-Aux). In each case, there are two frequent orders (Aux-V-O and O-V-Aux, Dem-Adj-N and N-Adj-Dem) that reveal the underlying hierarchies transparently. The two constraints differ, however: In the order ruled out by U20, *Adj-Dem-N, the middle element is structurally the highest, while FOFC rules out an order, *V-O-Aux, in which the middle element is lowest.