Behaghel's laws

The Behaghelschen laws describe the basic principles of the position of words and sentence elements in the set. They were used by the German linguist Otto Behaghel in the last volume of his four- volume work German syntax: formulated a historical presentation ( published 1923-1932 ). (Previous Presentation: Behaghel 1909)

It involves the following, cross-linguistic principles:

With linguistic means is secured so that the spokesman important statements in the memory of the listener set by found at the end of the sentence.

From the Behaghelschen laws, the later theories of linguistic focus developed (. Theme vs. rheme; Topic vs. Comment. ). They served together with some other of his subjects as suggestions for research in quantitative linguistics ( Best 2007).