A Quantitative Model of Word Order and Movement in English, Dutch and German Complement Constructions

We present a quantitative model of word order and movement constraints that enables a simple and uniform treatment of a seemingly heterogeneous collection of linear order phenomena in English, Dutch and German complement constructions (Wh-extraction, clause union, extraposition, verb clustering, particle movement, etc.). Underlying the scheme are central assumptions of the psycholinguistically motivated Performance Grammar (PG). Here we describe this formalism in declarative terms based on typed feature unification. PG allows a homogenous treatment of both the withinand between-language variations of the ordering phenomena under discussion, which reduce to different settings of a small number of quantitative parameters.