Towards a Typology of Nonconfigurationality

This article examines a variety of languages which have been called ‘nonconfigurational’, and introduces new material from the Australian language Jingulu, to show that there is a wider variety of types of nonconfigurationality than has been assumed in previous analyses within the Principles and Parameters framework. It is argued that Baker’s (1996a, b) approaches are essentially correct in their analysis of ‘how’ various nonconfigurational languages establish relationships between overt elements, but that they fail to capture the ‘why’ of nonconfigurationality. This source, it is argued, is a restriction on what positions in the clause are able to host encyclopedic information (as opposed to formal features, which are always permitted in core predicate and argument positions). These restrictions drive a language to employ various of the mechanisms proposed by Baker in his work. This analysis is then extended to a variety of language lypes. Finally, a continuum of (non)configurational types is established among some Australian languages