Scrambling (linguistics)

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Scrambling is a term in linguistics for the phenomenon of so-called "free word order", as it occurs in the middle of the German sentence. This type of word order freedom is typical for languages ​​with SOV word order ; the German therefore shares this characteristic z. B. with Japanese , Persian or Korean. In contrast, the word order z. B. in English structurally much more firmly established.

Development of the term

The term scrambling (from English to scramble , " to mix up") was introduced by the American linguist John R. Ross in 1967 in his dissertation Constraints on variables in syntax . Ross originally described word order variation as a stylistic rule that was located outside of the syntax. Since Kenneth L. Hale (1980, 1983) scrambling has been a primarily syntactic operation.

example

In the German subordinate clause, in addition to the regular sequence (a), others are also possible:

a.  that the professor the student the book gave
  Subject (SU) indirect object (IO) to you. Object (DO) Verb (V)
b.  that the professor the book the student gave
  SU DO IO V
c.  that the student the professor the book gave
  IO SU DO V
c.  that the book the professor the student gave
  DO SU IO V

All sequence variants of the three constituents of professor, student and book are grammatical in German. Other languages ​​have an even less restricted word order than German.

Scrambling can occur within the sentence (e.g. he showed the brother the book vs. he showed the book to the brother ) or constituents can move beyond the sentence boundary (so-called long distance scrambling), as in Japanese:

[Hanako ga [Taroo ga sono hon o katta to] omotteiru] vs.
[Sono hon o [Hanako ga [Taroo ga katta to] omotteiru]] .

theory

The nature of scrambling has been the subject of lively debate in grammar theory. While some authors claim that scrambling is generated from the base and that there are free and equivalent variants of a sentence (Hale and Farmer 1980 for Japanese; Mohanan 1990 for Hindi and Urdu, Fanselow for German), others argue that scrambling is the product of a sentence syntactic movement. The latter assumption assumes a “natural” basic sequence of sentence constituents from which the scrambled variant is derived (Saito and Hoji 1983, Hoji 1985 for Japanese; Neeleman 1994 for Dutch).

Scrambling as a basic generation

Hale's (1980, 1983) basic generation approach divides languages ​​into two types:

  • into those with a flat structure (non-configurational). See u. a. Hale 1980 and Farmer 1980 for Japanese; Fanselow 2001 for German; Mohanan 1990 for Hindi and Urdu etc.
  • and in those languages ​​that have a structural hierarchy (configurational). V. a. Saito and Hoji 1983, Hoji 1985; Neeleman 1994 for Dutch etc.

Scrambling as a movement

Kerstens (1975), van Riemsdijk (1978) and de Haan (1979) were the first to start analyzing scrambling as a syntactic movement , i.e. as a transformation . They postulated that the adverbs in and of themselves have a fixed position and therefore scrambling is an optional move to positions to the left of adverbs.

If scrambling is treated as a derivation of an underlying base word order, a few questions arise:

  • What is the underlying word order and how can it be determined?
  • What kind of movement is it?
  • What triggers the movement?
  • How can the obvious optionality of the movement be explained?

In government and binding theory

In Government and Binding Theory (GB) a distinction is made between A and A 'movements. While long distance scrambling is uniformly analyzed as an A'-movement, i.e. as a movement into a non-argument position, in the case of sentence-internal scrambling, however, it is discussed whether it is an A-movement, A'-movement or a mixed form.

In the minimalist program

The latter questions are essential for the analysis of scrambling in the context of the Minimalist Program (MP), since optional syntactic operations are not desired due to the principles of derivation economy. Any movement must therefore have a trigger. Scrambling is optional in that both the scrambled phrase and the unscrambled phrase are grammatical (as opposed, for example, to head movement of verbs). The trigger will i. d. Typically encoded as a morphosyntactic feature (feature) that contains the scrambled element and leads to movement in the course of derivation for the purpose of feature checking (e.g. [+ scrambling] feature in Müller, 1998 or [+ topic] in opinion 1995 , 2000). Extra-syntactic factors such as information structure or intonation can be seen as triggers for scrambling and treated like morphosyntactic features (e.g. [+ Focus] by Rizzi, 1997 or [+ anti-focus] by Molnárfi, 2002).

The problem of optionality remains and is e.g. B. by Molnárfi (2004) in the context of the MP's Copy Theory of Movement as a possibility to pronounce both the lower and the upper copy of the moving element, and thus practically transferred from syntax to phonology .

About the function of scrambling

Scrambling has an impact on information structure and sentence stress . Whether this is the motivation for scrambling or a by-product of an independent mechanism is not clear. Various theoretical approaches deal with the relationship between word order and information structure, in particular with the interactions between scrambling and topic and focus (e.g. Frey 2004, Opinion 2000, Molnárfi 2002).

Scrambling and language typology

Typologically , scrambling languages ​​probably differ from non-scrambling languages. a. by the position of the finite verb. In the majority of languages ​​that are believed to be scrambling, verb ending (SOV) is either mandatory or possible. SVO languages, on the other hand, usually do not scramble (however, Russian, for example, is controversial, which is considered an SVO language but has a very free word order).

Scrambling in different languages

It is not sufficiently clear whether the instances of free word order in the different languages ​​and the different word order variations within the individual languages ​​are one and the same phenomenon. Haider and Rosengren (1998), for example, see scrambling as a confusing collective term for different word order phenomena that can be described independently of one another.

Scrambling in Dutch

In Dutch, objects that are noun phrases or prepositional phrases can appear either to the left or to the right of the sentence adverb.

E.g.:

a.  Willemijn heeft vandaag [de tuin] omgespit
  Willemijn Has today the garden up-dug
b.  Willemijn heeft [de tuin] vandaag omgespit
  Willemijn Has the garden today up-dug
Willemijn dug up the garden today.

Scrambling in German

In German, the direct object can appear to the right or left of the indirect object, but also in a position in front of the subject (c). E.g.:

a. Kai said that Verena would give her mother [the blackberries].
b. Kai said that Verena would give [the blackberries] to her mother.
c. Kai said that Verena would give [the blackberries] to her mother.


Scrambling in Korean

Korean is an SOV language that allows the object of a verb to be moved to the left edge of the sentence, i.e. before a subject.

E.g.:

[Saca-lul] i kay-ka t i mwul-eyo
Leo AKK Dog nom bite-DECL
"The lion the dog bites"

Scrambling in Japanese

The direct object can possibly be moved across sentence boundaries (so-called long distance scrambling), i.e. it occurs in the pre-subject position. E.g.:

a.  Akira-ga Barbara-ga [kono-hana-o] tunda to omotteiru
  Akira nom Barbara Nom the flower-acc collected that thinks
b.  [kono-hana-o] Akira-ga Barbara-ga tunda to omotteiru
  the flower-acc Akira nom Barbara Nom collected that thinks
"Akira thinks Barbara collected the flower."

Evidence from neurolinguistics

English is relatively firm in its word order; in contrast, Spanish or Korean, for example, have a relatively free word order. Broca aphasic sufferers, for example, have a poor understanding of scrambled sentences or, above all, cannot understand them at all if they are scrambled passive sentences, since in Korean and Spanish the agent phrase of the passive sentence (as in German) can also appear at the beginning of a sentence. So z. B.

in Korean:

kay-eykey saca-ka mwul-li-eyo
Dog-through Leo NOM bite-PASS-DECL
"The lion is bitten by the dog"

in Spanish:

por la mujer la girafa está siendo empujada
by the woman the giraffe it will) "Being" straight pushed
"The giraffe is being pushed by the woman."

literature

  • A. Beretta, C. Schmitt, J. Halliwell, A. Mumm, F. Cuetos, & S. Kim: The Effects of Scrambling on Spanish and Korean Agrammatic Interpretation. In: Brain and Language 79-3 (2001), 407-425.
  • Hubert Haider , Inger Rosengren: Scrambling. In: Language and Pragmatics 49. Lund 1998.
  • Hubert Haider, Inger Rosengren: Scrambling - non-triggered chain formation in OV languages. In: Journal of German Linguistics, 15 (2003), 203-267.
  • Simin Karimi: Word order and scrambling. Blackwell, Oxford 2003
  • John Robert Ross : Constraints on variables in syntax. Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1967.

See also