Re: free word-order conlangs

* And Rosta said on 2006-07-16 20:41:33 +0200
> 1. How free is free? Is freedom limited to within some subsentential domain
> such as the clause? Within the domain of freedom are all orders
> permissible, or just very many/most?
There is an unmarked order in NPs, Modifiers Headnoun. Anything marked for case
can be moved out of its NP. The last (rightmost) item in an NP must be
marked for case unless it is the subject. So, in a regular sentence, any
piece of an NP can go anywhere. Nothing can move out of its clause
though.

Then there are some words (both some verbs and particles) that are
"axis-words" [+axis]. Phrases can *not* have bits and pieces on *both*
sides of an axis but must have all of them either before or after.

Most ways of making dependent clauses involve axis-marked words so you
could say that it's the axes that prevent words from going all over the
place.

> 2. What mechanism allows the freedom (without ambiguity)? Rampant concord?
> Or something else?
Dependent case-marking.

> 3. Is the freedom structural or just 'informational'? By 'structural
> freedom' I mean that linear precedence is of little importance to syntax.
Linear precedence is syntactically important for non-case-marked words
and around axes.

> By 'informational freedom', I mean that even if syntax is highly sensitive
> to linear precedence, the grammar nevertheless has resources such that for
> any combination of a meaning and an order of content words, some syntactic
> structure is available to express that combination. (An example of
> 'informational freedom' would be "The farmer killed the duckling" vs "The
> duckling was killed by the farmer", allowing both F-K-D and D-K-F orders,
> but with structural changes.)
Still not quite sure of what you mean by informational freedom here; for
instance in Basque, the first phrase is topic (or was it focus), the
next phrase is the opposite of the first and whatever comes after the
verb is unmarked. AFMCL, emphasis/focus is marked morphologically so the
order doesn't carry semantic/pragmatic information.


t.