Scrambling (linguistics)
Encyclopedia
Within transformational grammar
, scrambling is a common term for pragmatic word order. In the Chomskian
tradition, word orders of all languages are taken to be derived from a common source with a fundamental word order, so languages which do not follow a set pattern can be said to be "scrambled" from a "normal" word order. Two subtypes of scrambling are generally identified: scrambling of phrases (noun phrases, prepositional phrases, complementizer phrases, etc., or more generally, of arguments), and scrambling of words within phrases.
Transformational grammar
In linguistics, a transformational grammar or transformational-generative grammar is a generative grammar, especially of a natural language, that has been developed in the Chomskyan tradition of phrase structure grammars...
, scrambling is a common term for pragmatic word order. In the Chomskian
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
tradition, word orders of all languages are taken to be derived from a common source with a fundamental word order, so languages which do not follow a set pattern can be said to be "scrambled" from a "normal" word order. Two subtypes of scrambling are generally identified: scrambling of phrases (noun phrases, prepositional phrases, complementizer phrases, etc., or more generally, of arguments), and scrambling of words within phrases.