A central question for linguistics is how strings and structures relate to
one another. The majority of frameworks that exist today assume that the
hidden structures contain complete information about word order. Hence, the
theory of grammar is only a theory of the structure-generating component.
However, it is possible to design a theory of grammar which views the
structure-generating component as separate from the linearization
component. As a result, structural descriptions can directly incorporate
multi-dominance, and consequently eliminate the need for transformational
devices like movement. Another benefit is that linearization can take into
account any combination of structural, morpho-phonological and discourse
features, paving the way for a word order typology in the style of
Optimality Theory.
This dissertation presents an analysis of basic word order typology in this
formalism, and suggests that cross-linguistic frequency of word orders can
be explained if constraints are viewed as priors for Bayesian iterative
learning. Finally, it discusses the role of information structure and
morpho-phonology for language-internal word order.
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