Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax
- Cambridge Handbooks In Language And Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The Comparative Syntactic Enterprise
- Part I Comparative Syntax: Theory, Methodology, and Data Collection
- Part II Comparative Syntax: Building Blocks and Combinatorial Properties
- Part III Comparative Syntax: Dependency Relations and Dependency Marking
- Part IV Comparative Syntax: Interfaces
- 26 Syntax Semantics
- 27 Comparative Syntax, Morphology, and “Externalization”
- 28 Syntax and Externalization
- 29 Cross-Modal Comparative Syntax
- 30 Syntax and Information Structure
- 31 Syntactic Dependency Formation in Sentence Processing
- Index
- References
28 - Syntax and Externalization
Linearization
from Part IV - Comparative Syntax: Interfaces
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2026
By
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax
- Cambridge Handbooks In Language And Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The Comparative Syntactic Enterprise
- Part I Comparative Syntax: Theory, Methodology, and Data Collection
- Part II Comparative Syntax: Building Blocks and Combinatorial Properties
- Part III Comparative Syntax: Dependency Relations and Dependency Marking
- Part IV Comparative Syntax: Interfaces
- 26 Syntax Semantics
- 27 Comparative Syntax, Morphology, and “Externalization”
- 28 Syntax and Externalization
- 29 Cross-Modal Comparative Syntax
- 30 Syntax and Information Structure
- 31 Syntactic Dependency Formation in Sentence Processing
- Index
- References
Summary
While syntactic rules are clearly conditioned by constituent structure, it is less clear whether such rules refer to linear order. In this chapter, I explore several apparently syntactic phenomena in which linear order appears to play a role and discuss to what extent the data warrant a syntactic or an extra-syntactic account. The phenomena in question are (i) mirror-image effects in word order variation, (ii) left–right asymmetries in syntactic dependencies like movement, (iii) harmony within extended projections (the tendency for dependents to appear on the same side of a lexical head), (iv) harmony between extended projections (the tendency for extended projections to share left- or right-headedness), and (v) compactness (the tendency for the verb and the object to be linearly adjacent in SVO languages but not in SOV ones ). At least some of the data may allow an extra-grammatical account, in terms of acquisition (harmony) or parsing (compactness and left–right asymmetries in dependencies). However, whether such an account merely motivates grammatical constraints that refer to linear order or makes such constraint superfluous is hard to determine.
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- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax , pp. 938 - 966Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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