@inproceedings{hull-dobrovoljc-2025-word,
title = "Word Order Variation in Spoken and Written Corpora: A Cross-Linguistic Study of {SVO} and Alternative Orders",
author = {H{\"u}ll, Nives and
Dobrovoljc, Kaja},
editor = "Haji{\v{c}}ov{\'a}, Eva and
Kahane, Sylvain",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling, SyntaxFest 2025)",
month = aug,
year = "2025",
address = "Ljubljana, Slovenia",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2025.depling-1.16/",
pages = "150--155",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-290-9",
abstract = "This study investigates word order variation in spoken and written corpora across five Indo-European languages: English, French, Norwegian (Nynorsk), Slovenian, and Spanish. Using Universal Dependencies treebanks, we analyze the distribution of six canonical word orders (SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OSV, OVS). Our results reveal that spoken language consistently exhibits greater word order flexibility than written language. This increased flexibility manifests as a decrease in the dominant SVO pattern and a rise in alternative orders, though the extent of this variation differs across languages. Morphologically rich languages such as Slovenian and Spanish show the most pronounced shifts, while English remains syntactically rigid across modalities. These findings support the claim that modality significantly affects syntactic realizations and highlight the need for typological studies to account for spoken data."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="hull-dobrovoljc-2025-word">
<titleInfo>
<title>Word Order Variation in Spoken and Written Corpora: A Cross-Linguistic Study of SVO and Alternative Orders</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Nives</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Hüll</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Kaja</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Dobrovoljc</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2025-08</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling, SyntaxFest 2025)</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Eva</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Hajičová</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Sylvain</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Kahane</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">Ljubljana, Slovenia</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
<identifier type="isbn">979-8-89176-290-9</identifier>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>This study investigates word order variation in spoken and written corpora across five Indo-European languages: English, French, Norwegian (Nynorsk), Slovenian, and Spanish. Using Universal Dependencies treebanks, we analyze the distribution of six canonical word orders (SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OSV, OVS). Our results reveal that spoken language consistently exhibits greater word order flexibility than written language. This increased flexibility manifests as a decrease in the dominant SVO pattern and a rise in alternative orders, though the extent of this variation differs across languages. Morphologically rich languages such as Slovenian and Spanish show the most pronounced shifts, while English remains syntactically rigid across modalities. These findings support the claim that modality significantly affects syntactic realizations and highlight the need for typological studies to account for spoken data.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">hull-dobrovoljc-2025-word</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2025.depling-1.16/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2025-08</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>150</start>
<end>155</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Word Order Variation in Spoken and Written Corpora: A Cross-Linguistic Study of SVO and Alternative Orders
%A Hüll, Nives
%A Dobrovoljc, Kaja
%Y Hajičová, Eva
%Y Kahane, Sylvain
%S Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling, SyntaxFest 2025)
%D 2025
%8 August
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Ljubljana, Slovenia
%@ 979-8-89176-290-9
%F hull-dobrovoljc-2025-word
%X This study investigates word order variation in spoken and written corpora across five Indo-European languages: English, French, Norwegian (Nynorsk), Slovenian, and Spanish. Using Universal Dependencies treebanks, we analyze the distribution of six canonical word orders (SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OSV, OVS). Our results reveal that spoken language consistently exhibits greater word order flexibility than written language. This increased flexibility manifests as a decrease in the dominant SVO pattern and a rise in alternative orders, though the extent of this variation differs across languages. Morphologically rich languages such as Slovenian and Spanish show the most pronounced shifts, while English remains syntactically rigid across modalities. These findings support the claim that modality significantly affects syntactic realizations and highlight the need for typological studies to account for spoken data.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2025.depling-1.16/
%P 150-155
Markdown (Informal)
[Word Order Variation in Spoken and Written Corpora: A Cross-Linguistic Study of SVO and Alternative Orders](https://aclanthology.org/2025.depling-1.16/) (Hüll & Dobrovoljc, DepLing-SyntaxFest 2025)
ACL