Report #1: word order (first draft due Wednesday, 15 January).

      This is the first of the seven reports that you will be making on a series of topics that are of current interest to typologists. Before beginning the body of the report you should provide some basic information about the languages you are providing data from: 1, name, 2. family name (largest recognized grouping), 3. where spoken, 4. publication data of grammar you are using. In an endnote you should list any unusual symbols you use (capital letters, ampersand, pound-sign, etc.) with a brief indication of their phonetic value: "/p'/ is an ejective," "/T/ represents a voiceless retroflex stop," etc. In making reports you should always present an example or two to instantiate general statements. The examples should have three (or four) lines: 1. a data line (transcribed), 2. an interlinear or morph-by-morph gloss, 3. an (optional) category line, and, 4. a translation into colloquial English. For example: The predominant word order in Marathi is SOV:

1. mulaana gaaDi vikli
2. boy ... car ... sold
3. SUBJ OBJ VERB
4. 'The boy sold the car.'

The second (morph-by-morph) line is very important to an understanding of how the target language is constructed. (Absence of morph-by-morph glosses is the chief reason that much of the world's grammatical literature is unusable or inaccessible to those interested in cross-linguistic comparison.) The second line should be as detailed as necessary for an understanding of the matter at hand. In the example given above it is not necessary to indicate the case morphemes in the noun phrases or the tense and agreement morphemes in the verb, since we are only interested in the order of the major constituents of the clause. When case, agreement, or tense become the subjects of reports you will have to provide a more detailed analysis, even of the same data that you will use for this report. Much of the value of these reports will lie in the care and clarity with which examples are selected and glossed.

      In the word order report, after reading chapter 6 of Whaley (pp. 96-107), you should provide information for some of the parameters from Greenberg 1963. These are listed below:

1. Basic word order type: SOV, SVO, VSO, etc. If word order in your language is controlled by discourse, give examples to illustrate.

2. Secondary word order (if one exists) as an option to the first or as required in certain grammatical environments (for instance, SOV order in embedded clauses in German).

3. Postpositional or prepositional or other? Examples. 'therein' vs. 'in there' vs. ...

4. NAdj? AdjN? Either? Exx. 'things exotic' vs. 'exotic things'

5. GenN? NGen? Either? Exx. 'men's words' vs. 'words of men' (avoid pronominal genitives)

6. RelCl after or before (or both sides of) modified noun? ('a done deal' vs.) 'a deal that's been done'

7. Modal or auxiliary verbs before or after main verb? Ex. 'He can stay.' vs. ...

You may or may not succeed in locating information on the following two parameters:

8. Sentential objects before or after verb? '[He's here](this) I know.' (SentObj before V) vs. 'I know that [he's here].' (SentObj after V)

9. Standard (and marker) of comparison and comparative adjective: Adj(M)S or S(M)Adj or ... ? (Not every language has a comparative construction.)

'Mexico City is.. bigger... . . . . . . . . . . . . than . . . . New York.'
.......                   comparative adjective... marker... standard

Don't feel constrained by this list. Sometimes the most interesting facts about word order (or other predefined topics) are precisely those things which are not suggested in a list like this. Mention them, too, and give an example. It is also possible that certain things (such as #8 or #9) are treated in your language in an entirely different way from the one suggested. In such cases try to find an example of a functionally similar phenomenon. For example, your language may handle #9 with something like: New York is big, but Mexico City surpasses New York.

Bring a preliminary version of this report to the next class (15 January). I will return it with comments on Wednesday (22 January) so that you may bring a second, final version to the following class (27 Jan). Please phone (222-5145) or e-mail me (pehook@umich.edu) if you have questions or encounter problems.

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Last updated 19 January 2003.