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The present paper aims at further investigating the relative degree of flexibility of constituent order in Greek, which has been classified as a free word order language (Tzartzanos 1946, 1963; Greenberg 1963; Philippaki-Warburton 1982, 1985, 1987; Lascaratou 1984, 1989, 1994, among others). In this study we present additional evidence in support of the view expressed in Lascaratou (1989, 1994, 1999) that, though very flexible, Greek word order is not completely free, but rather it is the result of tension between competing forces determining linear arrangements. Focusing on the analysis of various VP structures drawn from the Hellenic National Corpus (HNC)", we observe that no single (syntactic and/or lexical/semantic) factor appears to override the others in a salient manner, the relative strength of each individual factor not always being clearly and reliably measurable. In particular, it seems that constituent length does not constitute a more important factor than the syntactic and/or lexical/semantic relations holding between elements in the Greek VP. What is more, with respect to the concept of "adjacency" put forward by Hawkins (2001, 2004) to interpret the preference for certain linearization patterns vs. others, we propose that constituent length essentially operates in a substantially different way and direction than syntactic and/or lexical/semantic dependency relations. More specifically, while-for parsing efficiency-constituent length may often be responsible for the postposition of heavy constituents thus resulting in the disruption of adjacency by separating elements which "belong together", syntactic and/or lexical/semantic relations, on the other hand, intrinsically motivate the adjacency of elements which "belong together", thus resisting any rearrangement that would bring them apart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss various reports within the issue on topics including word order variation in Greek, the use of corpus data, and the role of interpretability in interlanguage representations.

This paper deals with the close relation between the verb (V) and its direct object (DO) in Greek ditransitive structures, bringing together a formal analysis of the inherent nature of this special bond and a performance motivated treatment of factors determining variation in linearisation, i.e. the effects of performance principles on the permutation of the original order of arguments. Thus, first, by means of lexico-syntactic criteria, we propose that Greek –a relatively free word order language– exhibits the asymmetry between the DO and the IO which has also been observed in other languages (e.g. English, Icelandic, and Mainland Scandinavian languages). On the basis of such criteria, we conclude that in the underlying structure of both the PP Object Construction (PPOC) and the Double Object Construction (DOC), the DO is a sister to V. This structural relationship, represented in the single tree diagram we propose for the two constructions, reveals the V-DO special affinity. Second, we investigate the factors involved in the alternation from the basic to the derived orders both in the PPOC and the DOC. Thus, we suggest that the derivation of the orders V-NPacc-PP and V-NPacc-NPgen from V-PP-NPacc and V-NPgen-NPacc, respectively, is motivated by a number of largely interrelated factors (e.g. information focus, internal complexity, and syntactic weight), which may function either individually or compositionally. Finally, it is observed that the insights about the special affinity between the V and its DO expressed in our formal account of ditransitive orders are also captured in Lascaratou’s (1994) performance principles motivated analysis of a small corpus of Greek ditransitive constructions, in terms of the strong preference of the DO to be linearised immediately after the verb. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]