Syntax

Question 1

A: relationship between word order freedom & morph case marking: Points

Answer 1

Intro 2
Flexibility 3
Wh-in-situ F3 / 1
Verb fronting in questions 2

Question 2

A: relationship between word order freedom & morph case marking: intro 2

Answer 2

• understood through syntactic phonomena such as wh-movement + verb fronting in questions
• wh-movement (exemplified in Eng. interrogative pronouns who, what, why, when, where, how, which) = shifting wh-elements to the front of sentences

Question 3

A: relationship between word order freedom & morph case marking: flexibility 3

Answer 3

• langs with wh-movement prevalent experience flexibility in word order, stems from the ability to reposition elements for prag / stylistic reasons without altering underlying meaning
• E.g. “What did Mary say?” and “Mary said what?” = both grammatically correct + semantically equivalent due to wh-movement
• Flexibility allows variety while preserving syntactic + semantic integrity

Question 4

A: relationship between word order freedom & morph case marking: wh-in-situ 4

Answer 4

(wh-element remains in its original position)
[French]
- tend to have stricter word order requirements
- E.g. “you have see what?” - “Tu as vu quoi?” maintains a fixed word order due to the absence of wh-movement
- inability to freely rearrange sentences: correlates with absence of morphological case marking / word order = crucial for determining semantic roles
- Japanese + Mandarin, which lack wh-movement, exhibit more rigid word order patterns compared to langs like English & German

Question 5

A: relationship between word order freedom & morph case marking: verb fronting in qs 2

Answer 5

[German + Old English]
- Movement of main verb to position before subject in yes/no questions
= syntactic structures + word order can be intwined with morphological features which affect overall flexibility of sentence construction