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Syntactic Typology and Linearization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Viktor Krupa
Viktor Krupa*
Affiliation:
Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava
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Abstract

This paper has been inspired by ideas contained in W. P. Lehmann's work on syntactic typology (1978). It discusses a set of factors held to be relevant for the ways subject, verb, and object may be linearized in various languages: these are sentence depth, the cognitive factor, and relative structural independence. Various linearization patterns, i.e. SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OVS, and OSV conform to these factors in different degrees. A hypothesis is tested concerning the statistical correlation between the distribution of various linearization patterns among the languages of the world and their degree of conformity to the set of above-mentioned factors.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , September 1982 , pp. 639 - 645
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 by the Linguistic Society of America

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