Word Order in Discourse

Editors

Pamela A. Downing | University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Michael Noonan | University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

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ISBN 9789027229212 (Eur) | EUR 162.00

ISBN 9781556194245 (USA) | USD 243.00

Paperback – Available

ISBN 9789027229229 (Eur) | EUR 55.00

ISBN 9781556196362 (USA) | USD 83.00

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This volume brings together a collection of 18 papers dealing with the problem of word order variation in discourse. Word order variation has often been treated as an essentially unpredictable phenomenon, a matter of selecting randomly one of the set of possible orders generated by the grammar. However, as the papers in this collection show, word order variation is not random, but rather governed by principles which can be subjected to scientific investigation and are common to all languages.

The papers in this volume discuss word order variation in a diverse collection of languages and from a number of perspectives, including experimental and quantitative text based studies. A number of papers address the problem of deciding which order is 'basic' among the alternatives. The volume will be of interest to typologists, to other linguists interested in problems of word order variation, and to those interested in discourse syntax.

[Typological Studies in Language, 30] 1995. x, 595 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.30

Table of Contents

List of abbreviations | p. ix

Word order in discourse: By way of introduction

Pamela A. Downing | pp. 1–27

What are discourse principles made of?

Ron Cowan | pp. 29–49

Agent position in the Sejarah Melayu

Susanna Cumming | pp. 51–83

Preverbal nominals in Colville-Okanagan

Michael Darnell | pp. 85–104

Frequency and pragmatically unmarked word order

Matthew S. Dryer | pp. 105–135

Subject-verb word order and the function of early position

Bruce B. Harold | pp. 137–161

Focus position in SOV languages

Susan C. Herring and John C. Paolillo | pp. 163–198

Word order at the noun phrase level in Japanese: quantifier constructions and discourse functions

Alan Hyun-Oak Kim | pp. 199–246

WH-clefs and left-dislocation in English conversation: cases of topicalization

Kyu-hyun Kim | pp. 247–296

Pragmatic relations and word order in Chinese

Randy J. LaPolla | pp. 297–329

Left shifts in strongly VSO languages

Robert E. Longacre | pp. 331–354

The pragmatics of verb initial sentences in some ancient Indo-European languages

Silvia Luraghi | pp. 355–386

Morphological and prosodic forces shaping word order

Marianne Mithun | pp. 387–423

The word order of two-constituent constructions in spoken Spanish

Francisco Ocampo | pp. 425–447

Verb initial languages and information order

Doris L. Payne | pp. 449–485

On the discourse function of possessor movement in Emai prose narratives

Ronald P. Schaefer | pp. 487–515

Focal attention, voice, and word order: an experimental, cross-linguistic study

Russell S. Tomlin | pp. 517–554

Noun incorporation and object placement in discourse: the case of Guaraní

Maura Velázquez-Castillo | pp. 555–579

Subject Index | pp. 581–589

Author Index | pp. 591–605

Cited by

Cited by 9 other publications

Order by:

Breivik, Leiv Egil

2022. On relative clauses and locative expressions in English existential sentences. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 211 ff.

Fried, Mirjam

2003. Word order. In Handbook of Pragmatics, ► pp. 1 ff.

Maschler, Yael

2015. Word Order in Time. In Temporality in Interaction [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 27], ► pp. 201 ff.

Muchnik, Malka

2003. Changes in word order in two Hebrew translations of an Ibsen play. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 15:2 ► pp. 295 ff.

Myachykov, Andriy, Dominic Thompson, Christoph Scheepers & Simon Garrod

2011. Visual Attention and Structural Choice in Sentence Production Across Languages. Language and Linguistics Compass 5:2 ► pp. 95 ff.

Simard, Candide

2018. Chapter 4. On being first. In Information Structure in Lesser-described Languages [Studies in Language Companion Series, 199], ► pp. 85 ff.

Tachihara, Karina & Adele E. Goldberg

2020. Cognitive accessibility predicts word order of couples’ names in English and Japanese. Cognitive Linguistics 31:2 ► pp. 231 ff.

Tersis, Nicole & Shirley Carter‐Thomas

2005. Integrating Syntax and Pragmatics: Word Order and Transitivity Variations in Tunumiisut. International Journal of American Linguistics 71:4 ► pp. 445 ff.

[no author supplied]

2014. Beyond 'Khoisan' [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 330],

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