| In Dutch, one can use different word orders to express I gave a new jacket to my sister : Ik heb aan mijn zus een nieuwe jas gegeven. Ik heb een nieuwe jas aan mijn zus gegeven. Both these sentences mean the same thing, and both sentences are grammatical. I am interested in the question why people choose one word order rather than the other. Especially, I examine whether word order preferences are influenced by animacy , that is, whether the elements in the sentence are alive (animate) or not. Animacy plays an important role in many languages of the world, in language production as well as comprehension. I investigate whether and how it influences different types of word order variation in Dutch. My research project is part of the NWO research project Animacy , in which we try to get a better understanding of the exact role of animacy in language. |
