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Northwest Languages in Search of a Universal Word Order Typology
Academic Work
This paper is concerned with the fundamentals of word order typology and certain basic issues in the description of word order in the languages native to Northwestern North America. A number of Northwest languages are important to word order typology, either because they represent rare word order types, or simply because they are difficult to fit into any of the discrete categories of basic word order which form the foundations of most current approaches to word order typology. While some Northwest languages clearly have a basic word order, some others arguably do not, while still others have a basic word order but only in a partial way. In order to effectively compare and contrast the word order characteristics of Northwest languages, it is necessary to develop a word order typology based directly on the fundamental variables of word order. My point of view is that categories of basic word order are not ultimately the fundamentals of word order typology, but only a product of the intersecting of certain independent variables of word order. For all languages, these independent variables of word order can be measured and each language can be described in terms of each variable.
AW.00118
1985
Language and Linguistics
UBC Working Papers in Linguistics Press
International Conference on Salish Languages, 20, 1-74
International Conference on Salish Languages, 20, 1-74
word order typology, Northwest languages
Working Papers
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