No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Greenbergian Word Order Correlations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2026
Abstract
This paper reports on the results of a detailed empirical study of word order correlations, based on a sample of 625 languages. The primary result is a determination of exactly what pairs of elements correlate in order with the verb and object. Some pairs of elements that have been claimed to correlate in order with the verb and object do not in fact exhibit any correlation. I argue against the Head-Dependent Theory (HDT), according to which the correlations reflect a tendency towards consistent ordering of heads and dependents. I offer an alternative account, the Branching Direction Theory (BDT), based on consistent ordering of phrasal and nonphrasal elements. According to the BDT, the word order correlations reflect a tendency for languages to be consistently right-branching or consistently left-branching.
Information
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © 1992 Linguistic Society of America
Footnotes
*
The research for this paper was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Research Grants 410–810949, 410–830354, and 410–850540 and by National Science Foundation Research Grant BNS-9011190. Versions of this paper have been delivered at the Max Planck Institut für Psycholinguistik in Nijmegen (The Netherlands), the University of Alberta, Stanford University, UCLA, UC San Diego, SUNY at Buffalo, and the University of Toronto. I am indebted to comments from the audiences at those talks. I also acknowledge useful discussion with and/or comments from Lyn Frazier, Jack Hawkins, Karin Michelson, Edith Moravcsik, Johanna Nichols, Tim Stowell, Robert Van Valin, Lindsay Whaley, and David Wilkins. The Korean data cited is due to Sea-eun Jhang, the Hausa data to Mahamane L. Abdoulaye.
References
Abney, Stephen Paul. 1987. The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation.Google Scholar
Akmajian, Adrian, Steele, Susan; and Wasow, Thomas. 1979. The category AUX in universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 10. 1–64.Google Scholar
Anderson, John M. 1976. On serialization in English syntax. Ludwigsburg: Ludwigsburg Studies in Language and Linguistics, 1.Google Scholar
Aristar, Anthony Rodrigues. 1991. On diachronic sources and synchronic pattern: An investigation into the origin of linguistic universals. Language 67. 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Babby, Leonard H. 1987. Case, prequantifiers, and discontinuous agreement in Russian. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5. 91–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Lyle, and Mithun, Marianne. 1979. Introduction: North American Indian historical linguistics in current perspective. The languages of Native America: Historical and comparative assessment, ed. by Campbell, Lyle and Mithun, Marianne, 3–69. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1970. Remarks on nominalization. Readings in English transformational grammar, ed. by Jacobs, Roderick A. and Rosenbaum, Peter S., 184–221. Waltham, MA: Blaisdell. [Reprinted in Studies in semantics in generative grammar, by Noam Chomsky, 11–61. The Hague: Mouton, 1972.]Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1988. Language and problems of knowledge: The Managua lectures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1981. Language universals and linguistic typology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1989. Language universals and linguistic typology. 2nd edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Corbett, Greville G. 1991. The head of Russian numeral expressions. Guildford: University of Surrey, ms.Google Scholar
Dik, Simon. 1983. Two constraints on relators and what they can do for us. Advances in Functional Grammar, ed. by Dik, Simon, 267–98. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. 1980. The positional tendencies of sentential noun phrases in universal grammar. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 25. 123–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. 1988a. Object-verb order and adjective-noun order: Dispelling a myth. Lingua 74. 77–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. 1988b. Universals of negative position. Studies in syntactic typology, ed. by Hammond, Michael, Moravcsik, Edith, and Wirth, Jessica, 93–124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. 1989b. Large linguistic areas and language sampling. Studies in Language 13. 257–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. 1991. SVO languages and the OV:VO typology. Journal of Linguistics 27. 443–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frazier, Lyn. 1979. Parsing and constraints on word order. University of Massachusetts occasional papers in linguistics 5. 177–98.Google Scholar
Frazier, Lyn. 1985. Syntactic complexity. Natural language parsing: Psychological, computational, and theoretical perspectives, ed. by Dowty, David R., Kartunnen, Lauri, and Zwicky, Arnold M., 129–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M., and Fodor, Janet. 1978. The sausage machine: A new two-stage parsing model. Cognition 6. 178–210.Google Scholar
Gazdar, Gerald, Pullum, Geoffrey K.; and Sag, Ivan A. 1982. Auxiliaries and related phenomena in a restrictive theory of grammar. Lg. 58.591–638.Google Scholar
Gil, David. 1987. Definiteness, noun phrase configurationality, and the count-mass distinction. The representation of (in)definiteness, ed. by Reuland, Eric J. and ter Meulen, Alice G. B., 254–69. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Givón, T. 1971. Historical syntax and synchronic morphology: An archaeologist's field trip. Chicago Linguistic Society 7. 394–415.Google Scholar
Givón, T. 1975, Serial verbs and syntactic change: Niger-Congo. Word order and word order change, ed. by Li, Charles, 47–112. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Givón, T. 1984. Syntax: A functional-typological introduction, vol. 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glover, Warren W. 1974. Sememic and grammatical structures in Gurung (Nepal). Norman, OK: Summer Institute of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. Universals of language, ed. by Greenberg, Joseph, 73–113. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hale, Kenneth. 1983. Warlpiri and the grammar of non-configurational languages. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 1. 5–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Christopher. 1988. Integrating diachronic and processing principles in explaining the suffixing preference. In Hawkins, 321–49.Google Scholar
Harrison, Sheldon, and Albert, Salich Y. 1976. Mokilese reference grammar. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 1980. On implicational and distributional universals of word order. Journal of Linguistics 16. 193–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 1984. Modifier-head or function-argument relations in phrase structure? Lingua 63. 107–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 1990. A parsing theory of word order universals. Linguistic Inquiry 21. 223–61.Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A., and Cutler, Anne. 1988. Psycholinguistic factors in morphological asymmetry. In Hawkins, 280–317.Google Scholar
Cutler, Anne, and Gilligan, Gary. 1988. Prefixing and suffixing universals in relation to basic word order. Lingua 74. 219–59.Google Scholar
Heath, Jeffrey. 1986. Syntactic and lexical aspects of nonconfigurationality in Nunggubuyu (Australia). Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 4. 295–331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray S. 1977. X-bar syntax: A study in phrase structure. (Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 2). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jensen, John Thayer. 1977. Yapese reference grammar. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.Google Scholar
Jones, Morris, and Thomas, Allan R. 1977. The Welsh language: Studies in its syntax and semantics. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. 1979. On surface form and logical form. Linguistics in the seventies: Directions and prospects, ed. by Kachru, Braj B., 1–41. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Department of Linguistics. [Reprinted in Universal grammar: 15 essays, by Edward L. Keenan, 375–428. London: Croom Helm, 1987.]Google Scholar
Klima, Edward. 1965. Studies in diachronic syntax. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University dissertation,Google Scholar
Koopman, Hilda. 1984. The syntax of verbs: From verb movement rules in the Kru languages to universal grammar. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Kuno, Susumo. 1974. The position of relative clauses and conjunctions. Linguistic Inquiry 5. 117–36.Google Scholar
Langdon, Margaret. 1970. A grammar of Diegueño. (University of California Publications in Linguistics, 66). Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Winfred P. 1973. A structural principle of language and its implications. Lg. 49.42–66.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Winfred P. 1978. The great underlying ground-plans. Syntactic typology, ed. by Lehmann, Winfred P., 3–55. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Lightfoot, David W. 1982. The language lottery: Towards a biology of grammars. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Limburg, Machiel. 1983. The parameter preposition/postposition in word order typology. Linguistics in the Netherlands 1983, ed. by Bennis, Hans and van Lessen Kloeke, W. U. S., 149–58. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Mallinson, Graham, and Blake, Barry J. 1981. Language typology. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Maxwell, Daniel N. 1984. A typologyically-based principle of linearization. Lg. 60.251–85.Google Scholar
Melčuk, Igor A. 1985. Poverxnostnyj sintaksis russkix čislovyx vyraženij. (Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, Sonderband 16.) Vienna: Institut für Slawistik der Universität Wien.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 1990. Review of Hawkins (ed.) 1988. Journal of Linguistics 26. 203–22.Google Scholar
Nichols, Johanna. 1990. Linguistic diversity and the settlement of the New World. Lg. 66.475–521.Google Scholar
Okell, John. 1969. A reference grammar of colloquial Burmese, vol. 1. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Payne, Doris L. 1990. The pragmatics of word order: Typological dimensions of verb initial languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prior, Martin H. 1985. Syntactic universals and semantic constraints. London: University of London dissertation.Google Scholar
Pullum, Geoffrey K., and Wilson, Deirdre. 1977. Autonomous syntax and the analysis of auxiliaries. Lg. 53.741–88.Google Scholar
Samarin, William J. 1966. The Gbeya language: Grammar, texts, and vocabularies. (University of California Publications in Linguistics, 44.) Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Schachter, Paul. 1983. Explaining auxiliary order. Linguistic categories: Auxiliaries and related puzzles, vol. 2: The scope order and distribution of English, ed. by Heny, Frank and Richards, Barry, 145–203. Dordrecht: ReidelCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schachter, Paul. 1985. Parts-of-speech systems. Language typology and syntactic description, vol. 1: Clause structure, ed. by Shopen, Timothy, 3–61. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tomlin, Russell. 1986. Basic constituent orders: Functional principles. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Travis, Lisa. 1984. Parameters and effects of word order variation. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation.Google Scholar
Travis, Lisa. 1989. Parameters of phrase structure. Alternative conceptions of phrase structure, ed. by Baltin, Mark R. and Kroch, Anthony S., 263–79. Chicago: Univerity of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Tryon, Darrell T. 1968. Dehu grammar. (Pacific Linguistics, Series B, No. 7.) Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Vennemann, Theo. 1973. Explanation in syntax. Syntax and semantics 2, ed. by Kimball, John, 1–50. New York: Seminar Press.Google Scholar
Vennemann, Theo. 1974a. Analogy in generative grammar: The origin of word order. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress of Linguists (1972), 79–83. Bologna.Google Scholar
Vennemann, Theo. 1974b. Theoretical word order studies: Results and problems. Papiere zur Linguistik 7. 5–25.Google Scholar
Vennemann, Theo. 1976. Categorial grammar and the order of meaningful elements. Linguistic studies offered to Joseph Greenberg on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, ed. by Juilland, Alphonse, 615–34. Saratoga, CA: Anma Libri.Google Scholar
Juilland, Alphonse, and Harlow, Ray. 1977. Categorial grammar and consistent basic VX serialization. Theoretical Linguistics 4. 227–54.Google Scholar
Williams, Edwin. 1981. On the notions ‘lexically related’ and ‘head of a word’. Linguistic Inquiry 12. 245–74.Google Scholar
- 113
- Cited by