Partial word order freezing in Dutch
- Dutch allows for variation as to whether the first position in the sentence is occupied by the subject or by some other constituent, such as the direct object. In particular situations, however, this commonly observed variation in word order is ‘frozen’ and only the subject appears in first position. We hypothesize that this partial freezing of word order in Dutch can be explained from the dependence of the speaker’s choice of word order on the hearer’s interpretation of this word order. A formal model of this interaction between the speaker’s perspective and the hearer’s perspective is presented in terms of bidirectional Optimality Theory. Empirical predictions of this model regarding the interaction between word order and definiteness are confirmed by a quantitative corpus study.
Author details: | Gerlof J. Bouma, Petra Hendriks |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-430496 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.25932/publishup-43049 |
ISSN: | 1866-8364 |
Title of parent work (German): | Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe |
Publication series (Volume number): | Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe (625) |
Publication type: | Postprint |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2020/04/22 |
Publication year: | 2011 |
Publishing institution: | Universität Potsdam |
Release date: | 2020/04/22 |
Tag: | bidirectional optimality theory; corpus study; definiteness; variation; word order freezing |
Issue: | 625 |
Number of pages: | 23 |
Source: | Journal of Logic, Language and Information 21 (2012) 1 pp. 53-73 DOI: 10.1007/s10849-011-9145-x |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC classification: | 0 Informatik, Informationswissenschaft, allgemeine Werke / 00 Informatik, Wissen, Systeme / 004 Datenverarbeitung; Informatik |
4 Sprache / 40 Sprache / 400 Sprache | |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Green Open-Access |
License (German): | Creative Commons - Namensnennung-Nicht kommerziell 2.0 Generic |