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English as a VSO Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

James D. McCawley
James D. McCawley*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Abstract

Evidence is presented that the superficial Subject-Verb-Object word order of English arises by a transformation from an underlying constituent order in which clauses begin with verbs—or more correctly, predicates: the representation in question here is a semantic one in which noun, verb, adjective, conjunction, etc. are undifferentiated.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , June 1970 , pp. 286 - 299
Copyright
Copyright © 1970 by Linguistic Society of America

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References

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