Encoding Strategies in Word Order: the Evidence of Slavic Languages

Word order is predictable in all natural languages. It is possible to establish language-specific or type-specific systems of constraints which allow for grammatical linear orders and ban ungrammatical ones. • All natural languages including the so called ‘free word order languages’ have some linearization constraints. Languages, where all linear orders in all clauses are equally acceptable, do not exist. • Presumably, all natural languages have pairs (or sets with n elements, n≤ 2) of sentences with one and the same structure, but different linear orders. • For each pair/set of such sentences it is possible to establish the variant representing the basic order and get the derived orders from it. • It is possible to get the derived order from the basic one by singling out the element that moves: {a + b + c} ⇒ {b + a + tb + c}.