On universal 22

Abstract

Greenberg's pioneering work on word order universals (Greenberg, 1966) in which he proposed a total of universals concerning the ‘order of meaningful elements’ as well as a typology based on this order distinguishing 24 language types has truly had a great influence on linguistic research in the past few years. Not only has this important contribution to our understanding of language universals and typology precipitated such widespread interest in this particular field of linguistics which has culminated in a number of language specific monographs (see for instance Heine, 1976; Lehmann, 1974; Friedrich, 1975); symposia (see Li, 1975, 1976, 1977) and even larger projects (for example the Language Universals Project of Stanford University, and the Cologne project on language universals, see Greenberg, 1978; Seiler, 1973, 1978), but it also has influenced linguistics in general to such an extent that many consider syntactic description and research to be incomplete without a thorough discussion of word order, in some cases to the virtual exclusion of other topics.