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Cited by 1,323

The DOI matches its OpenAlex record.

The Greenbergian Word Order Correlations

Open access
Matthew S. Dryer·1992·Language
DOI 10.1353/lan.1992.0028
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Abstract

This paper reports on the results of a detailed empirical study of word order correlations, based on a sample of 625 languages. The primary result is a determination of exactly what pairs of elements correlate in order with the verb and object. Some pairs of elements that have been claimed to correlate in order with the verb and object do not in fact exhibit any correlation. I argue against the Head-Dependent Theory (HDT), according to which the correlations reflect a tendency towards consistent ordering of heads and dependents. I offer an alternative account, the Branching Direction Theory (BDT), based on consistent ordering of phrasal and nonphrasal elements. According to the BDT, the word order correlations reflect a tendency for languages to be consistently right-branching or consistently left-branching.

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Metadata

Authors
Dryer, M. S.
Venue
Language
Publisher
Linguistic Society of America
Published
1992-03-01
Volume
68
Issue
1
Pages
81-138
ISSN
0097-8507 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1353/lan.1992.0028
OpenAlex
W2093483153
Cited by
1,323
References
0
FWCI
26.04
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Greenbergian Word Order Correlations. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1353/lan.1992.0028
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Dryer, M. S. (1992). The Greenbergian Word Order Correlations. Language. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.1992.0028

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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.