Notes Helpful in Doing Word Order, by Several Linguists
WORD ORDER AND DISCOURSE TYPE
AN AUSTRONESIAN EXAMPLE
- philippine languages: verb-initial
- "pre-verbal NP" = "subject-like nominal"
- agutaynen: ungrammatical, to front a NOn-topic NP
- (1) and (2) grammatical topics occur post-verbally
- (3) and (4) : pre-verbal NPs are clause-internal. Clause-level Topics
- if the initial NP that precedes a nominal predicate is deleted, clause fragment is left and is uninterpretable continuity studies
- flexible word order languages: highly discontinous topics tend to come in pre-verbal position
- Givon > austronesian languages: SVO
- high continuity yield low morphosyntactic complexity, and that low continuity yields high morphosyntactic complexity discourse units:
- Tomlin (attention-driven episodic/paragraph model) "Individuals will use full nouns on first mention after an episode boundary...and...pronouns to sustain reference during an episode" information packaging
- strong order condition on types of information
- Mithun (1987) general tendency to put the most "newsworthy" item first in the clause. newsworthy: (1) represents significant new information (2) introduces a new topic (3) points out a significant contrast discourse threads
- "the foregorund/background distinction is a universal of some kind, one that may be realized formally in a number of different ways, depending on the language concerned"
- verb-initial pattern. foreground materian summary - Givon and Fox: pre-verbal in agutaynen correspond to highly discontinuous discourse topics
- Tomlin: mark the beginning of larger units of discourse
- Mithun: "newsworthy" information
- Hopper: pre-verbal NPs signal background or supportive information
- VS order correlates with temporal sequencing in many verb-initial languages
- pre-verbal NPs under several circumstances:
(1) discourse initially, where we must identify or establish what the discourse is about
(2) in instances of constrastive focus, where an entity is being
AN AUSTRONESIAN EXAMPLE
- philippine languages: verb-initial
- "pre-verbal NP" = "subject-like nominal"
- agutaynen: ungrammatical, to front a NOn-topic NP
- (1) and (2) grammatical topics occur post-verbally
- (3) and (4) : pre-verbal NPs are clause-internal. Clause-level Topics
- if the initial NP that precedes a nominal predicate is deleted, clause fragment is left and is uninterpretable continuity studies
- flexible word order languages: highly discontinous topics tend to come in pre-verbal position
- Givon > austronesian languages: SVO
- high continuity yield low morphosyntactic complexity, and that low continuity yields high morphosyntactic complexity discourse units:
- Tomlin (attention-driven episodic/paragraph model) "Individuals will use full nouns on first mention after an episode boundary...and...pronouns to sustain reference during an episode" information packaging
- strong order condition on types of information
- Mithun (1987) general tendency to put the most "newsworthy" item first in the clause. newsworthy: (1) represents significant new information (2) introduces a new topic (3) points out a significant contrast discourse threads
- "the foregorund/background distinction is a universal of some kind, one that may be realized formally in a number of different ways, depending on the language concerned"
- verb-initial pattern. foreground materian summary - Givon and Fox: pre-verbal in agutaynen correspond to highly discontinuous discourse topics
- Tomlin: mark the beginning of larger units of discourse
- Mithun: "newsworthy" information
- Hopper: pre-verbal NPs signal background or supportive information
- VS order correlates with temporal sequencing in many verb-initial languages
- pre-verbal NPs under several circumstances:
(1) discourse initially, where we must identify or establish what the discourse is about
(2) in instances of constrastive focus, where an entity is being