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Chapter 7. Frequential test of (S)OV as unmarked word order in Dutch and German clauses

A serendipitous corpus-linguistic experiment
  • Gerard Kempen and Karin Harbusch
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Crossroads Semantics
This chapter is in the book Crossroads Semantics

Abstract

In a paper entitled “Against markedness (and what to replace it with)”, Haspelmath argues “that the term ‘markedness’ is superfluous”, and that frequency asymmetries often explain structural (un)markedness asymmetries (Haspelmath 2006). We investigate whether this argument applies to Object and Verb orders in main (VO, marked) and subordinate (OV, unmarked) clauses of spoken and written German and Dutch, using English (without VO/OV alternation) as control. Frequency counts from six treebanks (three languages, two output modalities) do not support Haspelmath’s proposal. However, they reveal an unexpected phenomenon, most prominently in spoken Dutch and German: a small set of extremely high-frequent finite verbs with unspecific meanings populates main clauses much more densely than subordinate clauses. We suggest these verbs accelerate the start-up of grammatical encoding, thus facilitating sentence-initial output fluency.

Abstract

In a paper entitled “Against markedness (and what to replace it with)”, Haspelmath argues “that the term ‘markedness’ is superfluous”, and that frequency asymmetries often explain structural (un)markedness asymmetries (Haspelmath 2006). We investigate whether this argument applies to Object and Verb orders in main (VO, marked) and subordinate (OV, unmarked) clauses of spoken and written German and Dutch, using English (without VO/OV alternation) as control. Frequency counts from six treebanks (three languages, two output modalities) do not support Haspelmath’s proposal. However, they reveal an unexpected phenomenon, most prominently in spoken Dutch and German: a small set of extremely high-frequent finite verbs with unspecific meanings populates main clauses much more densely than subordinate clauses. We suggest these verbs accelerate the start-up of grammatical encoding, thus facilitating sentence-initial output fluency.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Dedication v
  3. Table of contents vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. Chapter 1. Bridging theoretical and experimental linguistic research 9
  6. Data and its use
  7. Chapter 2. Experimental research 23
  8. Chapter 3. Finding long-distance dependencies in the Lassy Corpus 39
  9. Chapter 4. How to compare speed and accuracy of syntactic parsers 57
  10. Chapter 5. Adposition clusters in Dutch 77
  11. Chapter 6. Polarity licensing and intervention by conjunction 93
  12. Chapter 7. Frequential test of (S)OV as unmarked word order in Dutch and German clauses 107
  13. Chapter 8. Kratzer’s effect in the nominal domain 125
  14. Chapter 9. Is bilingual speech production language-specific or non-specific? 139
  15. Chapter 10. Prosody of restrictive and appositive relative clauses in Dutch and German 155
  16. Chapter 11. Licensing distributivity 177
  17. Implementation and theory building
  18. Chapter 12. Extending categorial grammar to phonology 193
  19. Chapter 13. Stacking up for the long way down 207
  20. Chapter 14. Meaning between algebra and culture 227
  21. Chapter 15. Whether you like it or not, this is a paper about or not 249
  22. Chapter 16. Between desire and necessity 263
  23. Chapter 17. Inner aspect and the comparative quantifiers 281
  24. Chapter 18. The expressive en maar -construction 305
  25. Index 327
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.210.07kem

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Dedication v
  3. Table of contents vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. Chapter 1. Bridging theoretical and experimental linguistic research 9
  6. Data and its use
  7. Chapter 2. Experimental research 23
  8. Chapter 3. Finding long-distance dependencies in the Lassy Corpus 39
  9. Chapter 4. How to compare speed and accuracy of syntactic parsers 57
  10. Chapter 5. Adposition clusters in Dutch 77
  11. Chapter 6. Polarity licensing and intervention by conjunction 93
  12. Chapter 7. Frequential test of (S)OV as unmarked word order in Dutch and German clauses 107
  13. Chapter 8. Kratzer’s effect in the nominal domain 125
  14. Chapter 9. Is bilingual speech production language-specific or non-specific? 139
  15. Chapter 10. Prosody of restrictive and appositive relative clauses in Dutch and German 155
  16. Chapter 11. Licensing distributivity 177
  17. Implementation and theory building
  18. Chapter 12. Extending categorial grammar to phonology 193
  19. Chapter 13. Stacking up for the long way down 207
  20. Chapter 14. Meaning between algebra and culture 227
  21. Chapter 15. Whether you like it or not, this is a paper about or not 249
  22. Chapter 16. Between desire and necessity 263
  23. Chapter 17. Inner aspect and the comparative quantifiers 281
  24. Chapter 18. The expressive en maar -construction 305
  25. Index 327
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