Introduction
Inlinguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of thesyntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages ​​can employdifferent orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntacticsubdomains are also of interest.
Somelanguages ​​have relatively restrictive word orders, often relying on the orderof constituents to convey important grammatical information. Others, oftenthose that convey grammatical information through inflection, allow moreflexibility which can be used to encode pragmatic information such astopicalisation or focus. Most languages ​​however have some preferred word orderwhich is used most frequently.
Formost languages, basic word order can be defined in terms of the finite verb (V)and its arguments, the subject (S) and object (O). The latter are typically nounphrases, although some languages ​​do not have a major word class of nouns.
Thereare six theoretically possible basic word orders for the transitive sentence:subject verb object (SVO), subject object verb (SOV), verb subject object(VSO), verb object subject (VOS), object subject verb (OSV) and object verbsubject (OVS). The overwhelming majority of the world's languages ​​are eitherSVO or SOV, with a much smaller but still significant portion using VSO wordorder. The remaining three arrangements are exceptionally rare, with VOS beingslightly more common than OVS, and OSV being significantly more rare than twopreceding ones.
English language is characterized by a rigid word order inaccordance with which the subject of declarative sentences, as a rule, precedesthe predicate. This is the so-called DIRECT word order, eg Theassistant greeted the professor .
Any deviation from the rigid wordorder is termed inversion, eg Often has he recollected theglorious days of the Civil War.
The direct object is usually placed after the verbunless the indirect object precedes it, e.g. He offered me his help. Sometimesthe object is pushed to the front of the sentence, it occurs when:
1. The direct object is an interrogative word, which is naturally placed at thehead of the sentence to form a special question, eg What did you do?
2. The object is separated from its verb by some other parts of the sentence -adverbial complements, prepositional objects - when it is intentionally placedat the end of the sentence for the sake of emphasis, logical stress, eg Andunexpectedly he saw against the background of the forest two approachingfigures.
The indirect object cannot be used in the sentence withoutthe direct object. The indirect object is regularly put before the directobject. The prepositional objects can be put at the head of the sentence forthe sake of emphasis.
Occasionally the prepositional object is placed before thedirect object (in to-phrases).
Adverbial modifiers-the position of AM in the sentence isknown to be comparatively more free that that of other parts.
Those which are most closely linked with the part of thesentence they modify are the ones that denote the frequency or the property ofan action. They come between the subject and the predicate, or even inside thepredicate if it consists of two words-an auxiliary and a notional verb, or twoelements of a compound predicate.
The more usual position of theadverbial modifiers of time and place is, however, outside the group"Subject + predicate + object", that is, either before or after it. If it containsthe main new things to be conveyed, this adverbial modifier will have to comeat the end of the sentence. The adverbial modifier of time can go at thebeginning of the sentence.
An adverbial modifier can also come in between twocomponents of the predicate.
Attributes-the position of an attribute before orafter it's head word largely depends on it's morphological type. An attributeconsisting of a prepositional phrase can only come after it's head word. As toadjectival attributes, their usual position is before their headword, but insome case they follow it. An attribute expressed by an adverb may come beforeits headword.
Direct address and parentheses - the position of theseparts of the sentence is probably more free that that of all other parts. Adirect address can come in almost anywhere in the sentence.
Much the same may be said about parentheses. Sometypes of P usually come in between two constituent parts of the predicate.P.may also refer to one part of the sentence only, and is then bound to comebefore that part.
Particles-if a P belongs to a noun connected to anoun connected with a preposition, the P will come between the preposition andthe noun. Sometimes a P refers to the word of phrase immediately preceding it.This can only happen if the P stands at the end of the sentence or at least atthe end of a section of the sentence marked by a pause in oral speech and by acomma or other punctuation mark in writing. This usage seems to be restrictedto more or less official style.
Sometimes a particle comes before the predicate or betweentwo elements of the predicate, while it refers to some secondary part of thesentence standing further ahead. In these cases, then, the position of theparticle is determined, not by it's semantic ties, but by the structure of thesentence.
On the whole, the problem of WO proves to be a highlycomplex one, requiring great care and subtlety in the handling. Differentfactors have something to do with determining the place of one part of asentence or another.
Inversion which was brieflymentioned in the definition of chiasmus is very often used as an independent SDin which the direct word order is changed either completely so that thepredicate (predicative) precedes the subject, or partially so that the objectprecedes the subject-predicate pair. Correspondingly, we differentiate betweena partial and a complete inversion. The stylistic device of inversion shouldnot be confused with. grammatical inversion which is a norm in interrogativeconstructions. Stylistic inversion deals with. the rearrangement of thenormative word order. Questions may also be rearranged: "Your mother is athome? "asks one of the characters of J. Baldwin's novel. The inverted'Question presupposes the answer with. more certainty than the normative one.It is the assuredness of the speaker of the positive answer that constitutesadditional information which is brought into the question by the inverted wordorder. Interrogative constructions with. the direct word order may be viewed ascases of two-step (double) inversion: direct w/o ---> grammaticalinversion ---> direct w/o.
Basic Word Order
Englishword order is strict and rather inflexible. As there are few endings in Englishthat show person, number, case or tense, English relies on word order to showthe relationships between the words in the sentence.
InRussian, we rely on the endings to tell us how the words interact in thesentence. You probably remember the phrase made up by Academician LV Scherbato demonstrate the work of the endings and suffixes in Russian. (No Englishtranslation for this phrase.) Everything we need to know about the interactionof the characters in this sentence, we learn from the endings and suffixes.
Englishnouns do not have any case endings (only personal pronouns have some caseendings), so it is mostly the word order that tells ...
