Word Order in Russian Mottos:

The words in a sentence necessarily follow each other in a particular order—speech has a strictly linear character, which is physiologically determined. But meaning expressed by a sentence is not organized linearly. Therefore, at some point in the process of sentence production, the speaker (or a model of the speaker—for instance, an automatic device) has to linearize the lexical units that are selected to construct the sentence. Thus, Linearization of a structure built from lexical units is ac-tually the operation to examine while discussing word order. At least since Tesnière 1959: 17-20, Linearization is recognized as one of the main linguistic operations, cross-linguistically universal: the expression of non-linear meaning by linear sentences. The description of Linearization in language L can be broken down into three tasks: 1) Define the input and output representations, i.e., specify the two sets of structures: one of these sets must be processed by Linearization rules (these are the input structures), and the other set must be arrived at (the output structures). 2) Define the relevant linguistic factors, i.e., determine the types of linguistic phenomena of L that affect Linearization and have to be accounted for in Linearization rules. 3) Define the set of Linearization rules such that any valid input is properly matched by them to some valid output. The present paper addresses only two of these tasks: it describes (partially) the input and out-put representations needed for Linearization in Russian and sketches out the major classes of Line-arization rules, their form and their interaction. An in-depth discussion of linguistic factors affecting 500 word order in Russian is left out, although such factors are used in the rules proposed. The presenta-tion is carried out in the framework of the Meaning-Text approach, whose main principles and con-ventions are taken to be known to the reader (see, for instance, [Mel’čuk 1988: 43-91, Mel’ču