Dominant word order of nominal adverbials

Nominal (oblique) adverbials (marked here as X) are a type of adjunct to the verb, headed by a noun.  [1] These adjuncts express destination, instrument, accompaniment, recipient and other circumstances. Adverbials of manner and time are not considered, since their word order often diverges from those of other adverbials.

Dominant nominal adverbial word order is determined by analyzing the statistical frequency of various word orders in sentences that contain a transitive verb (predicative verb form), O (object or patient represented by a noun), and X. Frequency is based on statistical analysis of representative corpora. Since there is no absolute definition of what constitutes a sufficient amount and quality of data to constitute a representative sample of the language, new statistical analyses may refute the findings of earlier studies.

Dominant word order is determined in the following way:

  1. If the basic word order of nominal adverbials is the only possible word order, the dominant word order is the same as the basic word order.
  2. If no word order is at least twice as frequent as the second most frequent, there is no dominant word order.
  3. Any word order that occurs with at least twice the frequency of the second most frequent is the dominant order.[2]

Types:

NoXDWO: There is no dominant word order of nominal adverbials.

?XDWO: For objective reasons, the dominant word order cannot be determined.[3]

XVO: Dominant word order is XVO.

VXO: Dominant word order is VXO.

VOX: Dominant word order is VOX.

XOV: Dominant word order is XOV.

OXV: Dominant word order is OXV.

OVX: Dominant word order is OVX.

 

[1] The noun may be inflected, uninflected, or adpositional. Arguments, which are by definition not adjuncts, should not be considering; this includes the arguments expressing the recipient of a ditransitive verb.

[2] The basic and dominant word orders of nominal adverbials may differ from one another. For example, a language with unambiguously VOX basic word order may have no dominant word order or even XVO as its dominant word order.

[3] A typical example is when there is insufficient relevant data for statistical analysis.