LING6021 Language Types and Universals

  Lecture 3: Word order typology and universals

1. Basic word order

Greenberg's (1966) universal no.1: In declarative sentences with nominal subject and object, the dominant order is almost always one in which the subject precedes the object.

Basic word order frequencies in two language samples
  SOV  SVO  VSO  VOS  OVS   OSV  Unclassified
 Ruhlen (1975)  51.5%  35.6%  10.5%  2.1%  0  0.2%  --
 Mallinson & Blake (1981)  41%  35%  9%  2%  1%  1%   11%

Tomlin (1986): functional principles determining basic word order
 
 Principle  SOV  SVO  VSO  VOS  OVS  OSV
 Theme first     +    +   (+)   -   -   -
 Animate first     +    +   (+)   -   -   -
 verb-object bonding    +    +     -   +   +   -
 Overall 'score'    3     3     2     1   1   0

O before S languages (Pullum 1981)

VOS: Malagasy, Seediq (Austronesian)
OSV: Kabardian (Northwest Caucasian; ergative case system)
OVS: Apalai, Hixkaryana (Carib)

Determining basic word order in a language

Lei sik matje   vs.  Sik matje, lei?   (Cantonese)
you eat what          eat what  you

Janos levelet irt        vs. A levelet   Janos   irta     (Hungarian)
John letter wrote          the letter-Acc John wrote-Def
'John wrote a letter'    'It was John who wriote the letter'

Some problematic languaages

German: Verb-second in main clauses, SOV in subordinate and non-finite clauses

Gestern war ich nicht zu Hause
yesterday was I not at home
'Yesterday I was not at home'

Weil  ich  gestern  nicht zu Hause war...
because I yesterday not at home was
'Because I was not at home yesterday

Exercise: consider the sample sentences from Samoan collected by Elinor Ochs

(1) Na fasi e le tama Sina      (2)   Na fasi Sina e la tama
    Past hit Ag the boy Sina           Past hit Sina Ag the boy
  'The boy hit Sina.'                     'The boy hit Sina.'

(3) 'O Pesio ua sau           (4) 'olo'o moe le tama
    Top Pesio Asp come         Prog sleep the boy
   'Pseio has come.'               'The boy is sleeping'

(5) Sua e Lufilufi le kakou mavaega    (6) Sua oukou e maakou lol'!
   break Ag Lufilfi the our promise           strike you Ag  our  truck
  'Lufilufi violated our promise.'             'Our truck is going to hit you!'

(7) le masi a Sefo          (8)  le  lima  o  Sefo
    the biscuit of Sefo           the hand of Sefo
   'Sefo's biscuit'                  'Sefo's hand'

(a) What orders of S,V and O are represented in Samoan?
(b) Can a basic word order be determined in this language? How?
(c) What word orders appear in possessive constructions, and how do these relate to the basic word order?

2.  Explaining the ‘Greenbergian’ correlations

2.1 Cross-Category Harmony (Hawkins 1983)

Generalization across categories simplifies the grammar of a language:
 
 Head-Dependent   Dependent-Head
Verb phrase  V NP   NP V
Adpositional phrase  P NP  NP P
Genitive phrase  N NP  NP N
Comparative phrase  Adj XP  XP Adj

2.2 The Head Parameter in generative grammar (Travis 1984)

Head-initial XPs:   X’ -> [X YP]  i.e.    XP
                                                               /       \
                                                            Spec    X'
                                                                     /     \
                                                                  X       YP

Head-final XPs:    X’ -> [YP X]  i.e.     XP
                                                                /       \
                                                            Spec    X'
                                                                     /      \
                                                                   YP    X
2.3 Branching Direction (Dryer 1992)

Right-branching structures:           Left-branching structures:

                                 XP                                       XP
                               /       \                                   /       \
                            X       YP                            YP        X
                                     /     \                          /     \
                                   Y      ZP                ZP        Y
                                           /      \
                                          Z    FP

2.4 Parsing efficiency (Hawkins 1990, 1994)

Head-initial/right-branching languages: constituent structures built predominantly top-down
Head-final/left-branching languages: constituent structures built predominantly bottom-up

· Consistently head-initial or head-final languages are equally efficient

PP & VP: Harmonic
                                            VP                                       VP
                                          /      \                                   /         \
                                       V      PP                              PP         V
                                              /     \                          /        \
                                             P    NP                     NP        P
                                                 /____\               /_____\
                            come from warm climates    warm climates from come

· Combinations of head-initial and head-final structures are inefficient

PP & VP: Disharmonic
                                               VP                                      VP
                                            /         \                               /            \
                                        V           PP                        PP               V
                                                   /      \                   /        \
                                                NP       P              P          NP
                                            /_____\                            /______\
                              come warm climates from    from warm climates come

Recall universal: no. 3. Languages with dominant VSO order are always prepositional

VP & Comparative AdjP: harmonic orders

(a)                 VP                 (b)                        VP
                      /     \                                       /        \
                    V     AP                               AP        V
                           /     \                            /        \
                         Adj   ComP              ComP     Adj
                                  /   \                    /     \
                             Com   NP             NP    Com
         be smart(er) than John          John    than   smart(er) be

VP & Comparative AdjP: disharmonic orders

(c)                 VP                     (d)                  VP
                  /        \                                       /          \
                V         AP                              AP            V
                           /     \                            /        \
                    ComP     Adj                  Adj    ComP
                     /     \                                            /     \
                  NP  Com                                     Com NP
          be John than smart(er)         smart(er)  than  John  be
 

References
Croft, William. 1995. ‘Modern syntactic typology’, in M.Shibatani & S.Bynon (ed): Approaches to Language Typology. Oxford University Press.
Dryer, Matthew S. 1992. ‘The Greenbergian word order correlations.' Language 68/1, 81-138.
Frazier, Lyn. 1985. ‘Syntactic complexity.' In D.Dowty et al (eds), Natural Language Parsing: Psychological, Computational and Theoretical Perspectives. Cambridge University Press.
Greenberg, Joseph. 1966. ‘Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements’. In Greenberg (ed): Universals of Language. MIT Press.
Hawkins, John A. 1983. Word Order Universals. New York: Academic Press.
___ 1990. ‘A Parsing Theory of Word Order Universals.'  Linguistic Inquiry 21,2:  223-262.
___ 1994. A Performance Theory of Order and Constituency. Cambridge University Press.
Mallinson, Graham & Barry Blake. 1981. Language Typology: Cross-linguistic Studies in Syntax. Amsterdam: North Holland.
Pullum, Geoffrey. 1981. Languages with object before subject. Linguistics 19, 147-55.
Ruhlen, Merritt. 1975. A Guide to the Languages of the World. Language Universals Project, Stanford University.
Tomlin, Russell. 1986. Basic Word Order: Functional Principles. London: Croom Helm.


LING 6021 Term paper: some options
1. A typological sketch of a language (e.g. Hani, Manchu), or a group of languages (e.g. the Formosan languages of Taiwan)
2. A survey of a grammatical topic (e.g. agreement, noun classification) focusing on the degree of diversity across languages
3. An outline of an application of typology (e.g. how typologically unusual features of English create problems for ESL learners)