Word order

The word order (including word order, topology, sentence sequence, word sequence ) is the arrangement of words or parts of a sentence within a sentence; especially that of subject, object and finite verb form ( part of the predicate ). This arrangement follows certain rules that are defined in the grammar. Certain topological structures can be determined by the semantic content, the motivation of the speaker and other phenomena.

It is often treated in grammars mainly the sequence of word groups, Wortkonstituenten or set members and the word sequence neglected within these elements. The designations phrase sequence and word order are therefore, strictly speaking, two extreme observations of Stellungsregularitäten in the sentence. Between them different perception levels (eg, phrase parts / attributes) are.

Classification of languages

The parts of a sentence subject ( S), object (O) and finite verb ( V) can be view for the purposes of syntactic typology as Hauptkonstituenten, and you can then determine which is their usual order in a simple declarative sentence, the only of these three components there. Example: "John (S ) writes (V ) Novels (O). " The position of these three components is also called the basic word order. The basic word order in German would therefore SVO, if one takes as a criterion, which is the most common order in sentences with subject, object and one (1 ) Verb ( you take as a criterion the structural description, classified one German the other hand, as a language with Verbzweitstellung ).

Now you can the languages ​​typologically classified according to which basic word order prevails in them. According to the rules of combinatorics, there are six different possibilities for the position of three components, which are illustrated by examples in the following. Variants in which the subject precedes the object, are more numerous in natural languages, but as can be seen from the languages ​​specified in each case to come before all possibilities.

• Trivia:

Word order in linguistics

This founded by Joseph Greenberg version of word order typology is problematic in many respects. The following reasons were given for this:

• In some languages, grammatical function support such as subject, verb or object is hard to detect or may be omitted under certain circumstances (for example, in pro- drop languages).
• In some languages ​​possible word order patterns depend on the type of function support; for example, depends in Haida the basic word order of semantic properties of verbal arguments, such as animacy, from.
• The so- defined basic word order is not necessarily the fundamental for the grammar of a language. In German, the criteria used in this typology arise as a basic SVO word order, but for the grammar systematically underlying position is SOV.
• There are languages ​​that allow a largely free word order, without that one could say that the basic word order (eg, the Vedic and the Australian language Walpiri ).

Of some importance in the basic word order in generative grammar theory is according to Chomsky, which began with the generative transformational grammar. Therein, it is assumed that each set produced in a basic word order ( base-generated ) and is by operations such as transformations or movement (move α in minimalist theories ) is brought into a form which corresponds to its surface realization. This is actually the mentioned previously, for the grammar fundamental Hauptkonstituentenstellung, which is determined by the derivability of the positions actually occur in different structures, while the S / V / O basic word order type is often determined by the frequency of the respective surface row.