Tree Traversal and Word Order

This article looks at how the two-dimensional organization of a syntactic tree is translated into a one-dimensional string. It proposes a method of linearization that extracts the terminal string by visiting the nodes of a tree systematically in a predetermined order, either preorder, in-order, or p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Linguistic inquiry 2005-07, Vol.36 (3), p.367-387
Main Author: Kural, Murat
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Daughters
Derivational morphology
Descriptive studies and applied theories
Grammar
Hierarchy
Linearization
Linguistics
Mothers
Nouns
Sentences
Spell-Out
Syntax
tree traversal
Word order
Words
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Summary:This article looks at how the two-dimensional organization of a syntactic tree is translated into a one-dimensional string. It proposes a method of linearization that extracts the terminal string by visiting the nodes of a tree systematically in a predetermined order, either preorder, in-order, or postorder traversal. Crucially, it also argues that given a particular formulation of the extraction process, the traversal method chosen by individual languages produces the well-known crosslinguistic variations in word order typology (SVO, SOV, VSO, etc.) without having to resort to remnant movement.
ISSN:0024-3892
1530-9150
DOI:10.1162/0024389054396890