Universität Bielefeld - Sonderforschungsbereich 360
Preferred constituent order in the Mittelfeld
Kristina Skuplik and Rüdiger Flach
Topic
Our central question studied here is whether there exists a preferred German
constituent order. Assuming that there are several factors controlling deviations
from the preferred constituent order, we focus on the influence grammatical function
has on the constituent order in the Mittelfeld. To this end we present a model of
preferred German constituent order in the Mittelfeld and its experimental evaluation.
Motivation
SFB 360-Project C4 "Participants' Co-ordination of Syntax in Discourse" investigates
forms of co-operative sentence generation in task-oriented dialogues. Co-ordination
of syntactic structure is often realised as extraposition, i.e. as some kind of
syntactic construction using the so-called Nachfeld: Nachtrag or Ausklammerung.
Previous works on defining, identifying and describing the realisation of Ausklammerung
in task-oriented dialogues (Skuplik & Kindt 1998) were based on a modified version of
Heidolph, Flämig & Motsch's (1984) basic constituent order, the so-called
"Grundreihenfolge der Stellungsglieder". The preparations for the experimental
evaluation of this basic constituent order have resulted in both modifications
of several aspects and more precisely formulated conditions for this order.
Because of these differences we present our own model of preferred German constituent
order in the Mittelfeld.
Structure of this report
After a short synopsis of important research done in the field of constituent
order we present our own model of preferred German constituent order in the
so-called Mittelfeld. Finally, the evaluation of this model by a sentence
generation experiment is presented and discussed. Some aspects of the relation
between preferred and canonical constituent order are also discussed.
Postscript-File (~ 403 k)
Anke Weinberger, 1998-12-17, 1999-02-11