Volume 14, Issue 2

Abstract

In the comprehensive the order of constituents in the so-called middenstuk ‘middle field’ of the clause is obtained from the interaction of three principles: the inherence principle, the left-right principle and the complexity principle. In this contribution I will investigate the strength of these principles by analyzing the order of adjacent constituents in a small corpus of sports reports in newspapers. The basic assumption is that the reader of a sports report has a need to size up the middle field in order to find the arguments of the verb. It turns out that most middle fields contain two or more constituents; their order is determined by the inherence principle and, as a consequence, is mainly fixed. This applies especially to adjacent constituents that are both arguments. As for the order of other adjacent constituents the left-right-principle predicts the same order as the inherence principle. In contrast, the complexity principle seems only marginally relevant.

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/content/journals/10.5117/NEDTAA2009.2.DISC361
2009-07-01
2024-03-28
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