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Is a pragmatically unmarked constituent order verb-initial for transitive clauses?
Summary
This feature focuses on the relative order of the verb and its core arguments in a transitive clause. Any constituents other than the core arguments (A, P) and the verb of a transitive clause should be ignored. All questions concerning order of constituents aim to capture the pragmatically unmarked order between full NP constituents (not pronouns). Do not consider ‘left or right-dislocation’, accompanied by intonational signals or pragmatically marked constructions such as focus. If the verb phrase consists of several elements it is the lexical verb that counts. The position of auxiliaries/TAME marking elements can be ignored.
Procedure
- Find the order of core arguments in the language, either in the text of the grammar or in examples involving full NP core arguments.
- Code 1 if the pragmatically unmarked constituent order is consistently VSO.
- Code 1 if the pragmatically unmarked constituent order is consistently VOS.
- Code 1 if the unmarked constituent order is free and the author states that there is a pragmatically unmarked constituent order which is verb-initial for transitive clauses.
- Code 1 if the unmarked constituent order is free and there are examples of a pragmatically unmarked constituent order which is verb-initial for transitive clauses.
- Code 0 if the grammar states that the language has a fixed word order for transitive clauses that is not VSO or VOS.
- Code 0 if the grammar states the language has free or flexible word order but verb-initial constituent order is pragmatically marked.
- Code 0 if the constituent order is verb-initial only in examples involving pragmatic marking (contrastive markers, inferential markers, topic change, foregrounding, etc.).
- Code ? if the pragmatically unmarked constituent order(s) is not mentioned and cannot be determined by examining examples.
Examples
Nez Perce (ISO 639-3: nez, Glottolog: nezp1238)
Word order in Nez Perce is very free. According to Crook (1999: 231–232) any of the logically possible orders of a transitive verb and its A and P arguments is permissible, as shown in the following example:
ˀáayàtom páaqnˀìsaqa qèiqíine
ˀáayat-um pee-qnˀíi-see-qa eqi.it-ne
woman-ERG 3ON3-dig-INCMPL-PST qeqiit-OBJ
‘The woman was digging the qeqiit (an edible root).’ (Crook 1999: 231)
Other available word orders:
ˀáayàtom qèiqíine páaqnˀìsaqa
S O V
páaqnˀìsaqa ˀáayàtom qèiqíine
V S O
páaqnˀìsaqa qèiqíine ˀáayàtom
V O S
qèiqíine páaqnˀìsaqa ˀáayàtom
O V S
qèiqíine ˀáayàtom páaqnˀìsaqa
O S V
Because the available word orders in pragmatically unmarked transitive clauses with full NP arguments include V-initial orders, Nez Perce is coded 1.
Lao (ISO 639-3: lao, Glottolog: laoo1294)
According to Enfield (2007: 272), the closest word order pattern to a pragmatically unmarked constituent order for transitive clauses is A/S-V-O. In other words, the verb is not initial in pragmatically unmarked clauses (as in the example below). Lao is coded 0.
phuø pên3 mia2 khòòng3 thaaw4 nan4 hên3 qavaj2ñavaq1 khòòng3 faaj1 coon3
MC.HUM COP wife of young.man DEM.NPROX see organ of side bandit
‘That young man’s wife saw the bandit’s genitals.’ (Enfield 2007: 273)
Further reading
Dryer, Matthew S. 1989. Discourse-governed word order and word order typology. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 4. 69–90.
Dryer, Matthew S. 2007. Word order. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Clause structure, language typology and syntactic description, Vol. 1 (Second edition), 61–131. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013. Order of subject and verb. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Song, Jae Jung. 2011. Word order typology. The Oxford handbook of linguistic typology, 253–279. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
References
Crook, Harold David. 1999. The phonology and morphology of Nez Perce stress. Los Angeles: University of California. (Doctoral dissertation.)
Enfield, Nick J. 2007. A grammar of Lao. (Mouton grammar library, 38.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Related Features
- GB130 What is the pragmatically unmarked order of S and V in intransitive clauses?
- GB132 Is a pragmatically unmarked constituent order verb-medial for transitive clauses?
- GB133 Is a pragmatically unmarked constituent order verb-final for transitive clauses?
- GB134 Is the order of constituents the same in main and subordinate clauses?
- GB135 Do clausal objects usually occur in the same position as nominal objects?
- GB136 Is the order of core argument (i.e. S, A and P) constituents fixed?
Patron
Hannah J. Haynie