Hiwa Asadpour, Thomas Jügel (eds.). Word Order Variation: Semitic, Turkic and Indo-European Languages in Contact
Hiwa Asadpour, Thomas Jügel (eds.). Word Order Variation: Semitic, Turkic and Indo-European Languages in Contact. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2022, VIII+269 p. (Studia Typologica [STTYP] 31)
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1This volume deals with an ever-interesting issue in language typology: Word order, especially in terms of the variation of objects and “Targets” (as a covering term to denote the semantic roles representing the endpoint of expressions such as Goals, Recipients, Addressees, etc.). The crosslinguistic perspective of this volume encompasses Semitic, Turkic, and Indo-European (specifically Iranian) languages. It is noteworthy that the studies of word order in the Semitic-Turkic-Iranian contact area owe a lot to the works of the notable German linguist, Geoffrey Haig, who coined the term “Mesopotamian OVG word order” to explain the post-verbal elements (or Goals) in languages spoken in northern Iraq and neighbouring regions of western Iran, which do not follow the typical word order of the Iranian languages, which is SOV and verb-final.
2Some chapters of this volume cover general issues, which is the case for Thomas Wasow’s “Factors influencing word ordering”, with emphasis on the different factors that generally affect word order preferences, such as old information before new information; and more accessible before less accessible information. The role of information structure for word order is also studied by Doris L. Payne in her “Proximal to distal: Information flow and order in Maa”, which discusses selected notions of topic and their effect on the order of object phrases in Maa, a term referring to a number of Eastern Nilotic languages spoken in Kenya and Tanzania.
3The articles dealing with Iranian languages include both of synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Thomas Jügel’s “Word order variation in Middle Iranian: Persian, Parthian, Bactrian, and Sogdian” focuses on word order structures that include Targets in the mentioned Middle Iranian languages, showing that Targets may appear in various positions, including postverbal position, which is widespread in a number of new Iranian languages, too. Hiwa Asadpour’s “Word order in Mukri Kurdish – the case of incorporated Targets” and Agnes Korn’s “Targets and other postverbal arguments in Southern Balochi: A multidimensional cline” deal with new Iranian languages, and the latter argues that the postverbal position is the default one for Goals of motion verbs in Balochi. The fact that Balochi is historically a North-West Iranian language, but is currently spoken in the far south-east of the Iranian sphere provides a contrast with the findings of the studies of word order in the Iranian-Semitic contact zone.
4As to Turkic languages, Christiane Bulut’s “Word order in Iran-Turkic” deals with word order properties in varieties of Turkic spoken in Central Iran, and Valeriya Lemskaya’s “Word order variation in Chulym Turkic of Siberia” argues that the word order variation among the Chulym Turkic dialects is related to language contacts to some extent. Still in the Turkic language region, Nicolaos Neocleous “The evolution of VO and OV alternation in Romeyka” investigates the alternation of VO and OV in main and subordinate clauses in Romeyka, an Asia Minor Greek variety spoken in present-day Anatolia, and shows that the unmarked VO order in main clauses in Romeyka dates back to the pre-modern stages of Greek, while the pragmatically unmarked OV order is the result of the linguistic contact with local Turkish Romeyka.
5With respect to Semitic languages, the book contains Daniel Birnstiel’s “Copulas and Target phrase positioning in the Arabic dialects of Kurdistan”, with emphasis on word order variation of Target phrases in certain varieties of this type of Arabic, and Paul M. Noorlander and Dorota Molin’s “Word order typology in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic”, which concentrates on Sanandaj and Dohok, two distinct Jewish North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects. Another article deals with Domari, an Indic language with two dialectal clusters, namely Southern Domari (spoken in Palestine and Jordan), and Northern Domari (spoken in Lebanon, Syria and Turkey): Bruno Herin’s “Word order in contact and the expression of Target in Northern Domari” shows that Domari does not have a morphologically unified strategy to mark Targets, while the preverbal and postverbal positions are available for Target constituents.
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Behrooz Mahmoudi Bakhtyari, « Hiwa Asadpour, Thomas Jügel (eds.). Word Order Variation: Semitic, Turkic and Indo-European Languages in Contact », Abstracta Iranica [En ligne], Volume 45 | 2023, document 3, mis en ligne le 30 décembre 2023, consulté le 22 mars 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/abstractairanica/56583 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/abstractairanica.56583
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