Re: Heavy constituents in left-branching langs

Josh wrote:
<<
I know that languages (English included) will sometimes
shift around heavy constituents for clarity - but does this go for
strictly
left-branching languages? What do langs like Japanese do, that never
(AFAIK)
place anything after the verb? Make two sentences out of it? Stick in a
quotation mark particle? Do some weird kind of clefting?
 >>

You know, I went to a talk a year or so ago about heavy shift
in Japanese, and I'd be able to find the handout had I not just
moved (we have the TV, my desk, and the bed set up--and that's
it).  The basic answer, though, is...yes: all languages do this--even
Japanese.  The shifting discussed, though, is between NP's.  So if
LP is a light NP and HP is a heavy NP, you'd see this...

HP LP V

Regardless of the grammatical role served by the HP and LP
(leading to OSV word order, in some cases).  Of course, it has
to be heavy, and the heavier the better.

There were some differences noted between the type of shifting
you see in head-final and head-initial languages, but they were
slight, and I can't remember them (again, my handouts are packed
and buried...).  I think the difference was that in a language like
Japanese you see a preference for long before short, but in a
language like English, you see a preference for short before long,
but both of these are identical in that they want to pull the short
ones in closer to the verb, and push the long ones out--which
to me, at least, makes sense, since it's like you're trying to keep
the sentence together as best you can, and if the long thing's in
the middle, there's a chance you could lose it all.  There was
another major point made in the talk, but I can't recall.  Perhaps
someone can find a reference somewhere.

-David
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