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.- Anthology ID:
- 2021.ranlp-srw.22
- Volume:
- Proceedings of the Student Research Workshop Associated with RANLP 2021
- Month:
- September
- Year:
- 2021
- Address:
- Online
- Editors:
- Souhila Djabri, Dinara Gimadi, Tsvetomila Mihaylova, Ivelina Nikolova-Koleva
- Venue:
- RANLP
- SIG:
- Publisher:
- INCOMA Ltd.
- Note:
- Pages:
- 162–166
- Language:
- URL:
- https://aclanthology.org/2021.ranlp-srw.22
- DOI:
- Cite (ACL):
- Idan Rejwan and Avi Caciularu. 2021. On the Evolution of Word Order. In Proceedings of the Student Research Workshop Associated with RANLP 2021, pages 162–166, Online. INCOMA Ltd..
- Cite (Informal):
- On the Evolution of Word Order (Rejwan & Caciularu, RANLP 2021)
- PDF:
- https://preview.aclanthology.org/naacl-24-ws-corrections/2021.ranlp-srw.22.pdf