The order of core arguments is fixed if you cannot permute the order of core constituents (S, A, and P) and the verb without either i) changing the propositional content of the clause or ii) requiring intonational signaling or further elements (particles, cleft components, adjuncts).
Zuni (ISO 639-3: zun, Glottolog: zuni1245)
The usual word order in simple Zuni transitive clauses is SOV (Nichols 1997: 6–10). When weak pronouns serve as arguments of the verb they occur to the left of other core constituents, which can result in OSV order.
(a) waccita wihac'ana 'utte-kya dog baby bite-PST ‘The dog bit a baby.’ [*'The baby bit a dog.’] (Nichols 1997: 38) (b) hom waccita 'utte-kya 1SG.ACC dog bite-PST ‘The dog bit me.’ (Nichols 1997: 38)
Though there is a specific order for weak pronominal arguments that differs from the order of full NP arguments, this special weak pronoun order is also fixed. The order of subject, object, and verb thus cannot be permuted freely in Zuni clauses without changing the propositional content of the clause (as shown in the first example above). Zuni is coded 1.
Bislama (ISO 639-3: bis, Glottolog: bisl1239)
Bislama is generally a SVO language, as shown in the example below.
mi laekem yu 1SG like 2SG ‘I like you.’ (Crowley 2004b: 692)
Complicating this simple word order pattern is the following description of word order permutation: "A very important feature of the grammar of Bislama is the fact that noun phrases can be freely moved … to the beginning of the sentence. … There will typically also be a downward shift in intonation at the end of a fronted noun phrase with the rest of the sentence having the normal intonation of a completely new sentence" (Crowley 2004a: 159).
Because the movement of NP arguments to other positions in the sentence is accompanied by specific intonational signaling, the criteria for non-fixed word order are not met. Bislama is coded 1.
Bardi (ISO 639-3: bcj, Glottolog: bard1255)
Many Australian languages, e.g. Bardi (Bowern 2012: 592–594), permute the order of core arguments depending on discourse features. These order differences do not change propositional content and require no further elements. Bardi is an example of a language coded as 0 for this feature.
Dryer, Matthew S. 1989. Discourse-governed word order and word order typology. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 4. 69–90.
Bowern, Claire. 2012. A grammar of Bardi. Berlin: Mouton.
Crowley, Terry. 2004a. Bislama reference grammar. (Oceanic Linguistics Special Publication, 31.) Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Crowley, Terry. 2004b. Bislama: Morphology and syntax. In Bernd Kortmann, Edgar W. Schneider, Kate Schneider, Rajend Mesthrie & Clive Upton (eds), Morphology and syntax, 682–701. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Nichols, Lynn. 1997. Topics in Zuni syntax. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. (Doctoral dissertation.)
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| 0 | absent | 786 | |
| 1 | present | 1245 | |
| ? | Not known | 394 |
| Name | Glottocode | Family | Macroarea | Contributor | Value | Source | Comment |
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