The Evidence For Word Order Correlations Matthew S Dryer by Matthew S. Dryer instant download after payment.

Dunn et al. (2011) argue for the following four theses. First, they argue that there is no evidence of a crosslinguistic word order correlation between certain pairs of elements for which a correlation has been claimed in the previous literature. Second, they argue that although some correlations do exist, they are specific to individual families and not universal. Furthermore, they argue that, at least for the data they consider, these correlations are never found in more than half of the families they examine and, in the majority of cases, in only one family. Third, they argue that there is evidence in some families for correlations that they claim the existing literature predicts should not exist. Fourth, they argue that cognitive factors do not play a major role in determining linguistic structure, at least as far as word order is concerned, and that (in their words) “cultural evolution is the primary factor that determines linguistic structure, with the current state of a linguistic system shaping and constraining future states”.