On the persistence of SVO

The case of Modern Eastern Armenian

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3988326
AutoresPollet Samvelian (0000-0002-6622-4117, ILPGA, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle , Paris , France, autor correspondente), Pegah Faghiri (0000-0001-9121-6330, University of Amsterdam), Victoria Khurshudyan (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Pôle des langues et civilisations , Paris , France)
Ano2023
Volume61
Fascículo3
Páginas459-497
Data de publicação2023-05-25
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoLinguistics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0024-3949 • E-ISSN: 1613-396X
EditoraWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/ling-2021-0013
OpenAlexW4324028129
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas37

This study addresses the issue of unmarked word order in Modern Eastern Armenian (MEA), typologically considered a flexible (S)OV language due to its being strongly left-branching as well as the syntactic properties of its VP (focus, bare objects, low adverbs). However, Armenian grammars generally consider (S)VO to be the canonical order. We have conducted a corpus study and two sentence production experiments to tackle this controversy. These studies show that the placement of direct objects (DOs) is mainly triggered by definiteness. While definite DOs are overwhelmingly postverbal, indefinite DOs display a strong preference for preverbal placement. This implies a "typological discrepancy": although MEA is a strongly left-branching language, the unmarked placement of definite DOs is postverbal. We account for this "discrepancy" based on areal, historical and cognitive factors. Contact with OV languages has resulted in a consistent shift from right to left-branching in Armenian, whereas word order at the clausal level has resisted the shift because MEA makes optimal use of each order in accordance with their cognitive advantages. The evolution of word order in MEA is an illustration of the universal crosslinguistic bias toward SVO

Armenian · Branching (polymer chemistry) · Definiteness · Focus (optics) · Generative grammar · Linguistics · Sentence · Word order · Computer Science · History · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Mathematics · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation