Word order in zero-marking languages

Abstract

It has often been argued that languages with no morphological marking of core arguments (referred to here as zero-marking languages) should prefer SVO word order. This correlation is tested here by studying the effects of word order, genealogical relatedness, and areal diffusion on the distribution of zero marking with multiple logistic regression. The possible confounding areal and genealogical factors are studied in multiple ways. The results, based on data from 848 languages, suggest that zero marking (morphological simplicity) correlates with SVO (syntactic simplicity), regardless of its areally and genealogically biased distribution. It is argued that this word order preference is affected by functional motivations and language contact.

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