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<Paper uid="W04-1911">
  <Title>Word order variation in German main clauses: A corpus analysis</Title>
  <Section position="5" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="evalu">
    <SectionTitle>
4 Results
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"/>
    <Section position="1" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
4.1 Givenness
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> In 74 cases, the antecedent of an anaphoric complement occurs prior to our context window of two sentences. Sentences containing such complements are excluded from the analysis of givenness. In addition, 106 sentences with &amp;quot;es&amp;quot;-complements are excluded for the analyses we present in this paper. Table 1 shows the observed orderings of given and new complements for our set of SVO and OVS sentences.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1">  pairs ordered by givenness.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> In SVO sentences, given subjects precede new objects more often (187 times) than new subjects precede given objects (88 times). This tendency is in compliance with the linear ordering principle for information structure, even though the principle is not strictly obeyed as the 88 cases of new-before-given complements show. In OVS sentences, both orders occur about equally often. Given objects precede new subjects 144 times, and new objects precede given subjects 134 times. A chi-square test confirms a significant interaction between sentence type (SVO, OVS) and ordering (givenbefore-new, new-before-given; kh2(1) = 14.44, p &lt; .001). Thus, in contrast with for example Finnish (Kaiser and Trueswell, submitted), information structure seems not to be encoded in German OVS sentences, in the sense that fronted given objects do not cue upcoming new subjects for language perceivers. Obviously, factors other than givenness must have influenced the fronting of objects as is also apparent by the frequent occurrence of OVS sentences with given-before-given (96 times) and new-before-new (170 times) ordering of complements. If not, the canonical SVO order would be expected.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> We want to point out a second way of looking at the results, one that involves a more language producer-oriented view. Discourse context defines the information status of complements. Supposing now that a subject has been introduced in a context, but not an object, we can check which sentence structure occurs more often. We find more SVO (187 times) than OVS sentences (134 times). On the other hand, when the object of a sentence is given, but the sub-ject new, we find more OVS (144) than SVO (88) sentences (kh2(1) = 21.45, p &lt; .001). Information status of complements seems to have influenced the choice of word order. However, this interpretation must be taken with caution.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> First, we only look at a subset of all SVO sentences of Negra. Second, at least to a certain degree language producers can not only choose word order but also the grammatical function (subject or object) of discourse referents. The assignment of grammatical functions to constituents is assumed to happen during the functional stage of grammatical encoding in sentence production; only at a later positional stage the linear order is determined (e.g. Bock and Levelt (1994)).</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
4.2 Definiteness
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> One hundred and six sentences containing &amp;quot;es&amp;quot;-complements as well as four sentences in which the object or subject is a citation are excluded from the analysis. Table 2 shows the observed orderings of definite and indefinite complements. null  pairs ordered by definiteness.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> In SVO sentences, definite NPs precede indefinite NPs 242 times but the reverse ordering occurs only 50 times. Thus, the basic order of definite before indefinite NPs is largely met for SVO sentences. For OVS sentences, however, the preference to place definite NPs before indefinite NPs is reversed. Only 48 times precede definite NPs indefinite NPs, but 190 times precede indefinite NPs definite NPs (kh2(1) = 205.58, p &lt; .001). Thus, the ordering principle for definiteness is violated in OVS sentences. Rather, the results suggest a strong correlation between grammatical function and definiteness 4: Subjects are more often definite and objects indefinite, regardless of sentence type. Considering all four ordering possibilities (see Table 2), however, this tendency is much stronger for subjects than objects.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> Definiteness and givenness. Not unexpectedly, definiteness is significantly correlated with givenness for all complements in both sentence types (all p-values in Pearsons tests &lt; .01). At a closer look, indefinite NPs represent more often new information (72%), whereas definite NPs present given information (52%) as often as new information. This result matches corpus studies in other languages, which found that indefiniteness entails newness whereas definiteness can entail both givenness and newness (see e.g. Fraurud (1990)).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> Definiteness, givenness, and word order. We are also interested in whether the positioning of a complement before or after the verb is influenced by its information status. Is a definite complement, for example, more likely to occur before the verb if it also is given? Table 3 shows the number of occurrences of both definite-indefinite and indefinite-definite orders, split by the information status of the complements. For both sentence types (SVO and OVS), neither the positioning of the definite complement nor the positioning of the indefinite complement is affected by information status (in chi-square tests all p-values &gt; .3). Thus, in SVO sentences, definite subjects precede indefinite objects more often than indefinite subjects precede definite objects, regardless of whether subjects and objects present given or new information. Similarly, in OVS sentences, indefinite objects precede definite subjects more often than the reverse, regardless of the information status of the complements.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
4.3 Pronominalization
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> As with definiteness, we exclude 106 sentences containing &amp;quot;es&amp;quot;-complements. Table 4 shows the observed orderings of pronoun and full NP complements. In SVO sentences, 95 times a pronoun precedes a full NP, whereas a full NP precedes a pronoun only 33 times. Thus, as with givenness and definiteness before, the basic order of pronoun complements before full 4Since we only look at sentences in active and not in passive voice, subjects in our sentences are always agents and objects patients. We can therefore not exclude the possibility that thematic roles rather than grammatical functions drive determiner choice.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1">  indefinite pairs for given and new complements.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> NP complements is largely met for SVO sentences. In OVS sentences pronouns precede full NPs 76 times, but the reverse order also occurs 91 times (kh2(1) = 23.35, p &lt; .001). Interestingly, our results differ from what Kempen and Harbusch (2004) found for subordinate clauses in Negra. In adverbial and complement OVS clauses, they found that full NP objects never precede pronominalized subjects and translated this findings into a rigid rule schema. They argued that only strong conceptual influences such as topic/focus relations could override the ordering pattern. Such influences would then be more likely to play a role in main clauses, as we test them, than in subordinate clauses, since we do observe full NP objects preceding pronominalized subjects. However, this conclusion is based on a relatively small set of sentences and needs to be verified in a corpus larger than Negra. null  pairs ordered by pronominalization.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> Pronominalization and givenness. As expected, pronominalization is highly correlated with givenness for all complements in both sentence types (all p-values in Pearsons tests &lt; .001). Almost by definition, pronouns are given, except for a few cases in which the referent of a pronoun follows rather than precedes it within the same sentence. On the other hand, clearly not all given complements are pronouns. In fact, only 33% of all given subjects and 26% of all given objects are pronouns.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> Pronominalization, givenness, and word order. Table 5 shows the number of occurrences of both pronoun-full NP and full NP-pronoun orders, split by the information status of the complements. For both SVO and OVS sentences, the positioning of the pronoun is affected by its information status (for SVO: kh2(1) = 16.92, p &lt; .001; for OVS: kh2(1) = 4.76, p &lt; .03). Thus, the givenness of the pronoun significantly increases the likelihood for this complement to precede the other complement.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="5"> No such effect is found for full NPs.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="6"> (SVO) pro given pro new full given full new pro&lt;full 92 3 28 67 full&lt;pro 23 10 14 19 (OVS) pro given pro new full given full new pro&lt;full 69 7 30 46 full&lt;pro 70 21 37 54 Table 5: Linear order frequency of pronoun-full NP pairs for given and new complements.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
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