An attempt to explicate some principles of language production which modulate the relative 'salience' of the meaning components of the ideas to be expressed, and thus codetermine the word order of the resulting sentences, viz. the principles of 'naturalness' referring to the inherent salience of the meaning components as wholes, of 'vividness' referring to the inherent salience of the semantic features of the meaning components to be expressed, and of 'motivation-of-speaker', referring to the salience attributed by the speaker to the meaning components as wholes.