Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T08:39:18.810Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Revisiting binomial order in English: ordering constraints and reversibility1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2012

SANDRA MOLLIN
SANDRA MOLLIN*
Affiliation:
English Department, University of Heidelberg, Kettengasse 12, 69117 Heidelberg, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The factors governing word order in binomials, i.e. coordinated word pairs of the same word class, have been the subject of discussion for a long time in linguistics. For example, why do we say law and order but not order and law? The article tests seventeen different potential ordering constraints that have previously been suggested, from the areas of semantics, phonology and word frequency, by checking over 500 high-frequency binomials extracted from the BNC against them. A clear hierarchy of constraints is suggested following the analysis of their success in predicting binomial order. In addition, however, attention is drawn to the reversibility status of binomials. The vast majority of English binomials is reversible to a smaller or larger degree. Reversibility scores were computed for all binomials in the sample so that the relationship between reversibility on the one hand and the adherence to the ordering constraints on the other could be analysed, finding that a number of semantic and metrical ordering constraints indeed increase their predictive success towards the frozen end of the reversibility cline. Complying with these constraints, then, increases the likelihood of a binomial to be less reversible. Claims for the influence of certain factors on the freezing process are thus substantiated for the first time.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 81 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abraham, Richard D. 1950. Fixed order of coordinates: A study in comparative lexicography. Modern Language Journal 34, 276–87.Google Scholar
Battistella, Edwin. 1990. Markedness: The evaluative superstructure of language. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Behaghel, Otto. 1909. Beziehungen zwischen Umfang und Reihenfolge von Satzgliedern. Indogermanische Forschungen 25, 110–42.Google Scholar
Benor, Sarah Bunin & Levy, Robert. 2006. The chicken or the egg? A probabilistic analysis of English binomials. Language 82, 233–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight L. 1962. Binomials and pitch accent. Lingua 11, 34–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2005. From usage to grammar: The mind's response to repetition. LSA presidential address, www.unm.edu/~jbybee/downloads/Bybee2006FromUsage.pdf (accessed 15 June 2011).Google Scholar
Cooper, William E. & Ross, John Robert. 1975. World order. In Grossman, Robin E., James San, L. & Vance, Timothy J. (eds.), Papers from the parasession on functionalism, 63–111. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Ellis, Nick. 2002. Frequency effects in language processing. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 24, 143–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fenk-Oczlon, Gertraud. 1989. Word frequency and word order in freezes. Linguistics 27, 517–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gustafsson, Marita. 1975. Binomial expressions in present-day English: A syntactic and semantic study. Turku: Turun Yliopisto.Google Scholar
Gustafsson, Marita. 1976. The frequency and ‘frozenness’ of some English binomials. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 77, 623–37.Google Scholar
Hoey, Michael. 2005. Lexical priming: A new theory of words and language. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1905. Growth and structure of the English language. Leipzig: Teubner.Google Scholar
Makkai, Adam. 1972. Idiom structure in English. The Hague and Paris: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malkiel, Yakov. 1959. Studies in irreversible binomials. Lingua 8, 113–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayerthaler, Willi. 1981. Morphologische Natürlichkeit. Wiesbaden: Athenaion.Google Scholar
Müller, Gereon. 1997. Beschränkungen für Binomialbildung im Deutschen. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 16, 5–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oakeshott-Taylor, John. 1984. Phonetic factors in word order. Phonetica 41, 226–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oden, Gregg C. & Lopes, Lola L.. 1981. Preference for order in freezes. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 673–9.Google Scholar
Parker, Steve. 2003. The psychological reality of sonority in English. Word 54, 359–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinker, Steven & Birdsong, David. 1979. Speakers’ sensitivity to rules of frozen word order. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 18, 497–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, John R. 1980. Ikonismus in der Phraseologie. Der Ton macht die Bedeutung. Semiotik 2, 39–56.Google Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth O. 1984. Phonology and syntax: The relation between sound and structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sobkowiak, Włodzimierz. 1993. Unmarked-before-marked as a freezing principle. Language and Speech 36, 393–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zipf, George Kingsley. 1936. The psycho-biology of language: An introduction to dynamic philology. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press.Google Scholar