@inproceedings{rejwan-caciularu-2021-evolution-word,
    title = "On the Evolution of Word Order",
    author = "Rejwan, Idan  and
      Caciularu, Avi",
    editor = "Djabri, Souhila  and
      Gimadi, Dinara  and
      Mihaylova, Tsvetomila  and
      Nikolova-Koleva, Ivelina",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the Student Research Workshop Associated with RANLP 2021",
    month = sep,
    year = "2021",
    address = "Online",
    publisher = "INCOMA Ltd.",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-emnlp/2021.ranlp-srw.22/",
    pages = "162--166",
    abstract = "Most natural languages have a predominant or fixed word order. For example in English the word order is usually Subject-Verb-Object. This work attempts to explain this phenomenon as well as other typological findings regarding word order from a functional perspective. In particular, we examine whether fixed word order provides a functional advantage, explaining why these languages are prevalent. To this end, we consider an evolutionary model of language and demonstrate, both theoretically and using genetic algorithms, that a language with a fixed word order is optimal. We also show that adding information to the sentence, such as case markers and noun-verb distinction, reduces the need for fixed word order, in accordance with the typological findings."
}