A Formal Theory of Configurational Phenomena Tim

At an observational level t it is a commonplace that languages differ from each other in terms of the freedom with which constituents may berearranged within phrases. This has formed the basis of a traditional typological distinction between IIfree-word-order languages such as Sanskrit or Latin and IIfixed-word-order ll languages such as English. The theory of grammar should account for this variation in terms of specific parameters embedded within the deductive structure of the theorYt so that the contrast between IIfree word order ll and IIfixed word order" can be traced to the options exercised by particular grammars at the points specified by Universal Grammar. In this way, linguistics will approach a ,goal set by Ken Hale and others, such that observed cross-linguistic typologies of grammars ought to follow in a principled fashion from the constructs of syntactic theory. Within the scientific tradition of generative grammar, it has generally been assumed that fixed constituent order is determined pri-marily by the formulae of context-free rewrite rules of the Categorial component of the base. Each phrase structure rule defines the internal structure of a particular type of constituent, specifying the set of constituents which it immediately dominates and the linear order in which these constituents appear. For instance, consider the (simplified) version of the phrase structure rule for VP in (l):