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Description:
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Latin is a language with variable (so-called 'free') word order.
Constituent Order in Classical Latin Prose (Caesar, Cicero, and
Sallust) presents the first systematic description of its constituent order
from a pragmatic point of view. Apart from general characteristics of Latin
constituent order, it discusses the ordering of the verb and its arguments
in declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences, as well as the
ordering within noun phrases. It shows that the relationship of a
constituent with its surrounding context and the communicative intention of
the writer are the most reliable predictors of the order of constituents in
a sentence or noun phrase. It differs from recent studies of Latin word
order in its scope, its theoretical approach, and its attention to
contextual information. The book is intended both for Latinists and for
linguists working in the fields of the Romance languages and language typology.
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