Typology of word order

Determining the basic order of the components requires an answer to some questions. Firstly, it is necessary to understand what order of components should be considered basic for a particular language. So, one of the leading specialists in typology of word order and the editor of the World Atlas of Language Structures, Matthew Dreyer uses two criteria to determine the basic order: pragmatic (as well as phonetic, morphological and syntactic) neutrality and frequency in the corpus of texts ^[5] . Moreover, not all languages ​​allow only one, rigid, variant of the order - in many languages ​​grammatical, though not always neutral, can be several, as, for example, in Russian (Russian refers to SVO languages ^[1] ):

Secondly, the basic order of the components should be determined on the basis of the material of the array of specially selected proposals. These sentences should be syntactically independent (and not relative ), declarative (narrative) and containing full argument nouns (and not pronouns in which the order may differ). In addition, preference is given to non-analytic (that is, not consisting of a semantic and auxiliary verb, such as, for example, the compound forms of the future tense in the Russian language “will do”) of the verb forms; if this is not possible, the position is determined by the semantic verb (see the case of the German language ^[1] ). The driver gives an example of such a sentence ^[1] :

The sentence in (2) is narrative, and not, for example, interrogative, syntactically independent, since there is no clause on which it would depend, and also contains the full argument nouns of the dog (Russian "dog") and the cat (Russian . "Cat"). Based on such proposals, the basic order of the components is determined (the basic order in English is SVO ^[1] ). When no explicit preferences are found in the above conditions, the language is considered as having a free order of sentence members. Such a technique is often questioned, since it seems very unreliable to determine the basic order of the components in the language based on the analysis of one type of clause from all the syntactic tools available in the language ^[1] .

Among natural languages, SOV is the most popular type: according to WALS , 565 of the 1377 languages ​​considered, that is, more than 40% of languages, belong to this type ^[1] . SOV languages ​​are witnessed in all areas of the globe, the smallest concentration is observed in Europe , where, according to the map, they are represented by the Luduz languages , Turkish , Basque , Karachay-Balkar , Bashkir , Tatar , Crimean Tatar , Karaite , Krymchak , Kumyk and Urumian . SOV languages ​​also include Ainu ( Japan ), Archin ( Dagestan ), Itelmen ( Kamchatka ), Korean ( Korea ), Somali ( Great Somalia ), Tibetan ( Tibet ), Hindi ( India ), Hopi ( USA ), Japanese ( Japan ) and many others. other

For example, in Japanese :

Of the 1377 languages ​​currently included in the World Atlas of Language Structures map numbered 81A, SVO is observed in 488 languages. Together, languages ​​with a subject in the first position account for more than 75% of the total number of languages ​​(1,053 out of 1,377). According to WALS , SVO languages ​​dominate in Europe, with the lowest concentration observed in North America and northern Asia . SVO languages ​​include languages ​​such as Russian , English , Ukrainian , Bulgarian , Izhora , Vietnamese , Guarani ( South America ), Indonesian , Yoruba ( Nigeria ), Latvian , Rotuma ( Fiji ), Swahili ( Africa ), Finnish , Hausa , Javanese and other

For example, in Mandarin Chinese :

SVO is the most common word order in Creole languages , which may indicate its “naturalness” in human psychology. Perhaps a “physical metaphor” played a role in its popularity. For example, when throwing an object, attention naturally moves from the thrower ( subject ) to the path of the flying object ( predicate ) and then to the target ( addition ) .

The VSO order is observed in 95 languages; the VSO and VOS languages in this sample are a minority compared to the SVO and SOV languages. According to the atlas, VSO languages ​​are represented everywhere, with the exception of the continental part of Eurasia and Australia .

Among European languages, the VSO order is noted only in Celtic languages ( Irish , Welsh , Scottish ). Other examples of such languages ​​include the Kabile language ( North Africa ), the Masai language ( East Africa ), the Chompan language ( Malay archipelago ), the Hawaiian language ( Oceania ), chatino ( Mesoamerica ), etc. For example, in literary Arabic :

The WALS 81A map sample contains 25 languages ​​with a basic VOS order that are found in Oceania and America , as well as in Madagascar and the Malay Archipelago .

Examples of VOS languages ​​are vari ( South America ), toba ( Sumatra ), and Kiribati ( Micronesia ). For example, in the Nias language ( Indonesia , Nias island):

The world atlas of linguistic structures consists of only 15 languages ​​with the initial position of the object, 11 of which are languages ​​with the basic OVS order . These include, among others, the languages ​​of Hishkaryan ( Brazil ), Shingu-asurini ( Brazil ), Cubeo ( Colombia ), Mangaray ( Australia ), etc.

For example, in hishkaryana :

Despite the fact that languages ​​with the basic order of OVS are typologically rare, this order of constructing a sentence is found in languages ​​with a free order of words, for example, in Russian , see the example above. Interestingly, this type (as one of the most rare) was chosen for Klingon , the language of the fictional alien race from the Star Trek series, which makes the syntax of this language unusual for the average American or European viewer.

The WALS lists four OSV type languages: Qué ( South Africa ), Nadeb ( Brazil ), Tobachi ( Indonesia ), and Vik-Ngatan ( Australia ). M. Dreyer gives the following example from the Nadeb language:

It should be understood that the sample of 1377 is not completely complete and represents all the languages ​​of the planet, in addition, many languages ​​from the sample itself are not described enough, so their assignment to one or another type can often be erroneous. Among other things, the OSV order is used in many languages ​​with other basic orders for certain syntactic purposes, for example, in English , usually in the future tense or with the but union, for example, in the sentences “To Rome I shall go!” (Rus. “I will go to Rome!”), “I hate oranges, but apples I'll eat!” (Rus. “I hate oranges, but I will eat apples!”) And in the definitive clause, where the direct or indirect addition is the relative pronoun (cf. "What I do is my own business").

This word order is found in some artificial languages, for example, in Teonaht , and is often chosen by the inventors of languages ​​for its unusual sound: a similar order of components is used by the character Master Yoda from the Star Wars movie epic.

For some languages, the definition of the basic order of the components according to the method described above is impossible, therefore, in the World Atlas of Language Structures there is a separate map for languages ​​in which two dominant orders are distinguished. Five combinations are distinguished: SOV or SVO (29 languages), VSO or VOS (14 languages), SVO or VSO (13 languages), SVO or VOS (8 languages) and SOV or OVS (three languages). However, one should not understand that other combinations are impossible: the absence of an OVS or OSV combination means only that the language, the order of the components of which could be described in this way, did not fall into the research sample.

It should be noted that the grounds for postulating in the language two equivalent orders are even more blurry than in the case with one basic order, and the resulting typology has less predictive power, since it does not take into account the relationship between supposedly equivalent orders in languages. The groups are very heterogeneous, because in different languages ​​the conditions for varying orders can vary and are controlled both by the semantics and pragmatics of the sentence, and by the formal syntactic context, as in German (it is referred to as SOV / SVO languages), see Driver example:

The verb, which carries personal indicators (semantic, as in (9a) or official, as in (9b)), is in second place, therefore, as Dreyer notes, at the grammar level, the German language belongs to type V2 (English verb-second ), where the verb is always in second place, however, the fact that the participle of the semantic verb is located after the object makes us classify German as SOV / SVO ^[1] .

With this basic order, the second member of the narrative independent and neutral sentence is always the predicate. The word order of V2 is found in Germanic languages , in some Reto-Romance languages , syntax of type V2 was also widespread in Middle Welsh as well as French (at a certain stage of its development).

There are two kinds of V2 languages:

• Languages ​​CP-V2 (e.g. Swedish ) allow word order changes only in the main sentence.
• IP-V2 languages ​​(such as Icelandic and Yiddish ) also allow word order changes in subordinate clauses.

The designations CP and IP come from the theory of generative grammar , according to which there is a special part of speech - the complementer (C), which in traditional linguistics as a whole corresponds to a subordinate union. In languages ​​CP-V2, the predicate moves in its place. If it is already occupied by the “what” union (in the subordinate clause), changing the order of words is prohibited. In IP languages, there is position I, which is located immediately after the complementer and is never occupied (except after moving type V2), and therefore word ordering in subordinate clauses is allowed. Kashmiri is a third, intermediate type in which a change in the order of words in the main and object-sentimental subordinate clauses is allowed, but not in the definitive clause.

In the early stages, English was a type V2 language, and retained some remnants of the former structure. She can meet:

• in fixed sentences: 'so am I'
• circumstantial revolutions: 'not once has he bothered to phone'
• in structures like 'I didn't go and neither did he'.

It was shown that in English the word order used to correspond to the SVO scheme of the IP-V2 type, and also that such word order, after minor changes, could develop into a simple type of SVO, to which English currently belongs .

The classification principle proposed by Greenberg was not universal, since in some languages ​​one of the elements S, V or O can be located freely in a sentence, in speech often one of the elements can be omitted and there is no way to take into account intransitive sentences. The American linguist Winfred Lehman ^{[7] was the} first to turn to an alternative classification according to the VO / OV parameter. According to his theory, this order is the main among all other particular orders and determines their behavior: the dependent on the name are on the side of the name, related to the verb on the side of the verb. However, this approach did not offer an explanation of why the order of those dependent on the name should be determined precisely in relation to the object (and not the subject).

In a 1992 publication, M. Dreyer shows in a sample of 625 languages ​​distributed by macroareals that there are many particular orders for which there is a statistically significant correlation with VO / OV (for example, the adlog and noun group , article and noun , etc. , although the order of the noun and dependent adjective, as well as some others, do not correlate with VO / OV ^[8] ). To explain the facts, Driver introduced the theory of the Branching Direction Theory , according to which non-branching (non-useable) categories behave like V with respect to order, and branching (phraseic) ones like O; all languages ​​strive to reach a state where all correlative orders are constructed in the same way, according to the VO or OV model. Такая синтаксическая структура более предсказуема, поэтому, как предполагает Драйер, обрабатывается эффективнее и проще. Однако известно, что базовый порядок слов в языке может меняться (пример см. ниже), причем изменения эти могут происходить и в ходе языкового контакта; тогда, если бы все языки стремились к естественному упрощению синтаксической структуры, то, должно быть, давно его достигли, в то время как существует большое количество языков, не соответствующее идеальным типам.

В качестве примера языка, где изменялся базовый порядок составляющих, можно привести валлийский язык . Так, известно, что в древневаллийском языке были возможны в нейтральном контексте как предложения с порядком VSO (которые встречаются чаще), так и с порядком SVO ^[9] . В средневаллийский период базовым был порядок V2, однако затем порядок V2 был утрачен, и в современном валлийском языке базовым является порядок VSO, а V2 сохранился только в определённых маркированных конструкциях ^[10] , например:

• Актуальное членение предложения
• Лингвистическая типология
• Универсалия (лингвистика)
• Языки VSO
• Языки VOS

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• Comrie, Bernard. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology (англ.) . — Chicago Press, 1989.
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• Dryer, Matthew S. Order of Subject, Object and Verb (англ.) // Language 68. — 1992. — P. 81—138 .
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