Neeleman, Adriaan; Van de Koot, Johannes; (2016) Word Order and Information Structure. In: Féry, C and Ishihara, S, (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure. Oxford University Press: Oxford, United Kingdom.

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Abstract

This chapter is concerned with the question to what extent free word order phenomena are regulated by information-structural (IS) constraints. Progress on this question must combine detailed empirical study with bold theoretical work that aims to test restrictive hypotheses about available syntactic operations, available IS-primitives, and their mapping. The present overview evaluates four cross-cutting word-order generalizations on the basis of a rough classification of syntactic operations and IS-primitives. Operations will be divided into those that are A-related (A-scrambling, passive), those that are A’-related (A’-scrambling), those that involve doubling with a pronoun or clitic, and finally those that involve extraposition, and it is assumed that IS-primitives are restricted to topic, focus, contrast and givenness. Some discussion is offered of how the four generalizations identified here might emerge as effects of deeper properties of the language faculty or human psychology.

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