Word order in the Old Italian DP

In this article I examine the impact of a cartographic approach on research about diachronic change and investigate the internal structure of the DP in Old Italian (OI). I propose that some of its marked word orders can be interpreted as instances of a scrambling phenomenon which allows a series of DP internal elements to move in front of the head noun. I show that scrambling in the DP displays similar properties to those found in the vP and the CP layers, which suggests an analysis in terms of left peripheral movements in a way similar to the one usually assumed for the V2-like property of OI. Although I will not analyze in detail scrambling in the vP phase or V2 in this article (see Poletto (2006), (forthcoming) for a detailed discussion), I will assume that all phases are built in a parallel fashion (see Poletto (2006)) in particular with respect to the formal properties associated with the left peripher

Kauffman's adjacent possible in word order evolution

Word order evolution has been hypothesized to be constrained by a word order permutation ring: transitions involving orders that are closer in the permutation ring are more likely. The hypothesis can be seen as a particular case of Kauffman's adjacent possible in word order evolution. Here we consider the problem of the association of the six possible orders of S, V and O to yield a couple of primary alternating orders as a window to word order evolution. We evaluate the suitability of various competing hypotheses to predict one member of the couple from the other with the help of information theoretic model selection. Our ensemble of models includes a six-way model that is based on the word order permutation ring (Kauffman's adjacent possible) and another model based on the dual two-way of standard typology, that reduces word order to basic orders preferences (e.g., a preference for SV over VS and another for SO over OS). Our analysis indicates that the permutation ring yields the best model when favoring parsimony strongly, providing support for Kauffman's general view and a six-way typology.Comment: Minor corrections (small errors concerning the parameters of model 1, language, style,...) except for the mathematical arguments at the end of section "Further details about Model 2" of the supplementar

A Processing Model for Free Word Order Languages

Like many verb-final languages, Germn displays considerable word-order freedom: there is no syntactic constraint on the ordering of the nominal arguments of a verb, as long as the verb remains in final position. This effect is referred to as ``scrambling'', and is interpreted in transformational frameworks as leftward movement of the arguments. Furthermore, arguments from an embedded clause may move out of their clause; this effect is referred to as ``long-distance scrambling''. While scrambling has recently received considerable attention in the syntactic literature, the status of long-distance scrambling has only rarely been addressed. The reason for this is the problematic status of the data: not only is long-distance scrambling highly dependent on pragmatic context, it also is strongly subject to degradation due to processing constraints. As in the case of center-embedding, it is not immediately clear whether to assume that observed unacceptability of highly complex sentences is due to grammatical restrictions, or whether we should assume that the competence grammar does not place any restrictions on scrambling (and that, therefore, all such sentences are in fact grammatical), and the unacceptability of some (or most) of the grammatically possible word orders is due to processing limitations. In this paper, we will argue for the second view by presenting a processing model for German.Comment: 23 pages, uuencoded compressed ps file. In {\em Perspectives on Sentence Processing}, C. Clifton, Jr., L. Frazier and K. Rayner, editors. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 199

Problems of methodology and explanation in word order universals research

Ever since the publication of Greenberg 1963, word order typologists have attempted to formulate and refine implicational universals of word order so as to characterize the restricted distribution of certain word order patterns, and in some cases have also attempted to develop general principles to explain the existence of those universals

Sentential Word Order and the Syntax of Question Particles

Polar question particles in languages with VO word order pose a problem for the otherwise robust Final-Over-Final Constraint, which rules out a head-final phrase immediately dominating a head-initial phrase (Holmberg 2000). This paper offers a description of these particles and the constraint, and offers data supporting the hypothesis that these final particles are different from their initial counterparts in a fundamental way