WORD ORDER & SENTENCE STRUCTURE

PAULINA CARO PAULINA MILLAMAN

CORPUS
The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe La cada de la casa Usher, by Julio Cortzar

WORD ORDER
The order of the elements in the clause, elements which are, of course, often realized by phrases or clauses rather than just one word each: subject, verb, objects, predicatives, and adverbials.(Biber et al. 1999)

Syntactic Rules: English and Spanish

Communicational Purpose: Speakers have options in encoding a message: there are several places in the grammar where they may choose either X+Y or Y+X. (Whitley 2002)

WORD ORDER: ENGLISH AND SPANISH CONTRAST

English: fixed order Spanish: more syntanctic possibilities
Why? Differences in the Morphological Level Las lenguas con ms informacin morfolgica necesitan menos de la informacin sintctica, por lo que tienen un orden de palabras ms libre. Por otro lado, las lenguas con menor informacin morfolgica, necesitan utilizar la informacin sintctica del orden de palabras para codificar de manera precisa el contenido del mensaje. (Valenzuela 2002).

WORD ORDER: ENGLISH AND SPANISH CONTRAST

The degree of complexity of word order in Spanish is equivalent to the one of intonation and word stress in English. (Butt & Benjamin 2011) Spanish also uses word emphasis and loudness in the constructions, but they are less frequent than in English.
Im going to school. neutral sentence Im going to school. not you Im going to school. you say I wasnt Voy al colegio. Yo voy al colegio. Pero s voy al colegio.

Im going to school. not somewhere else Al colegio es adonde voy.

WORD ODER: ADJECTIVES

Function of Adjectives: to describe and to determine nouns Types of Adjectives (Butt & Benjamin 2011) Limiting or restrictivo: narrows the scope of the noun upon a few white trunks of decayed trees (Poe) Descriptive or no-restrictivo: refers to a general aspect of the noun a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit
(Poe)

Spanish Adjectives: can precede or follow the noun

English Adjectives: fixed position

ADJECTIVES AND POSITION

Contrast between English and Spanish adjectives in terms of their position in the sentence (Sol & Sol 1977) Predicative Adjectives: No differences between English and Spanish when adjectives are linked to the noun in the predicate. Example: El nio est cansado The child is sick Attributive Adjectives: In Spanish, this type of adjectives may occur in pre-nominal or post-nominal position. In English, they only occur in pre-nominal position. Examples:
Pre-N: () invadi mi espritu un sentimiento de insoportable tristeza Post-N: Durante todo un da de otoo, triste, oscuro, silencioso

ATTRIBUTIVE ADJECTIVES IN PRE-NOMINAL POSITION

Occur in both languages In this position, adjectives describe inherent characteristics of the noun I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn (Poe) Mir la casa y el sencillo paisaje del dominio (Cortzar)

ATTRIBUTIVE ADJECTIVES IN POST-NOMINAL POSITION

In Spanish: the most common position In this position, adjectives restrict, clarify, and specify the meaning of the noun () la amarga cada en la existencia cotidiana.(Cortzar) Also, this position is used to give emphasis to the quality of the noun. In order to produce the same effect, English relies on stress.

lleg una mujer hermosa a BEAUTIFUL woman arrived