An Asymmetry between VO and OV Languages: The Ordering of Oblique Phrases (X) A neglected area of word order typology involves the ordering of oblique phrases (such as English prepositional phrases) in relation to direct objects (O) and verbs (V): opened [the door] [with the key] and put [the book] [on the table] and their counterparts in other languages. The World Atlas of Language Structures (Map 84, Dryer with Gensler 2005) has established an interesting asymmetry between head-initial (VO) and head-final (OV) grammars: the former have a consistent and almost exceptionless preference for VOX orders; the latter have variable basic orders, all of XOV, OXV and OVX are productively attested, and there are fewer clear basic orders than in VO languages. In this talk I pursue this asymmetry from the perspective of the 'processing typology' program developed in Hawkins (1994, 2004), examining alternative orderings of V, O and X within and across languages. My central hypothesis, the Performance-Grammar Correspondence Hypothesis (PGCH), predicts that the principles underlying variation in performance (or the lack of it) are the same principles that underlie variation in grammars (or the lack of it), and hence that performance and processing can help us better understand grammatical variation, in this case the asymmetry between VO and OV with respect to obliques. Performance data from English and Japanese lead to predictions for grammars that are tested on various samples and on the WALS database. Common patterns and principles are found in both sets of data, supporting the PGCH and the proposed performance explanation for grammars. |