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Heaviness vs. newness: The effects of structural complexity and discourse status on constituent ordering
- Language
- Linguistic Society of America
- Volume 76, Number 1, March 2000
- pp. 28-55
- 10.1353/lan.2000.0045
- Article
- Additional Information
Variations in postverbal constituent ordering have been attributed to both grammatical complexity (heaviness) and discourse status (newness), although few studies compare the two factors explicitly. Through corpus analysis and experimentation, we demonstrate that both factors simultaneously and independently influence word order in two English constructions. While past investigations of these factors have focused on their effects in language comprehension, we argue that postponing heavy and new constituents facilitates processes of planning and production.