Word Order Typology in Optimality Theory
نویسنده
چکیده
1. Introduction. SVO, SOV, VSO and VOS are all well-attested basic word orders in different languages. It is not clear however how to formally motivate why this type of variation at the base exists. In this paper, I intend to look at unmarked word orders in different languages and explain why there is variation at the base. I will propose an analysis within Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993), and suggest that the observed variation be due to the effect of constraints that are normally not active due to the domination of higher ranked discourse-related constraints. I will therefore suggest that unmarked word orders are a case of the more general phenomenon Emergence of the Unmarked (McCarthy and Prince 1994). The organization of the paper is the following: section 2 illustrates the word order patterns to be looked at. Section 3 spells out theoretical assumptions, and section 4 the constraints to be used, and the ranking proposed for Portuguese. In section 5, I derive the other word orders considered by re-ranking the constraints proposed for Portuguese. This work intends to test the power of OT as a theory of language variation, and to add to the studies done by Grimshaw who suggest that different word orders are not optional, but the result of different functional specifications in the input. Here, the reverse situation is explored: if several word orders are legitimate expressions of the functional specification in the input, why and how does a language select one of them as basic?
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