An empirical study of word order correlations, based on a sample of 625 languages, determined exactly what pairs of elements correlate in order with the verb and object. An alternative to the Head-Dependent Theory is presented: the Branching Direction Theory, based on consistent ordering of phrasal and nonphrasal elements. (85 references)…

Presents a discourse-functional account of English inversion, based on an examination of a large corpus of naturally occurring tokens. It is argued that inversion serves an information-packaging function and that felicitous inversion depends on the relative discourse-familiarity of the information represented by the preposed and postposed…