Uncommonly Taught Languages

The order of constituents in Finnish clauses having free word order is analyzed. It is proposed that these clauses are defined only in terms of their immediate constituency, and that the logically possible permutations of these constituents form another set of sequence constructions, which transcend individual clause types. Each sequence construction encodes, by default, a particular pragmatic value and the definiteness of the order of the noun phrases. The formal concomitants of the sequence constructions are the order of the constituents and the accentual pattern. Thus, the same formal constituents in different combinations realize different constructions. The implicit claim is that sentences are not interpreted just against their context, but that the constructions themselves encode the pragmatics of their use. The analysis begins with a discussion of the traditional views of Finnish word order and proceeds to illustrate what pragmatic values word order encodes, how word order interacts with various kinds of definiteness, and how the partitive subject interacts with definiteness. Finally, the rules for the sequence construction are outlined. (MSE) *******************************V*************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * C