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Abstract:

Since Montague's PTQ, semanticists have generally assumed that semantic composition crucially depends on the bracketing but not on the linear order. Also, transformational syntactic theories only represent the so-called 'rigid' word order in the structural input to semantic composition. The so-called 'free' word order is not even represented, so the issue of its semantic import is rendered moot already by the syntax.

In a notable departure from this this syntactic tradition, recent work in HPSG has developed a more even-handed approach to 'rigid' and 'free' word order, in terms of topological fields (e.g., Kathol 2000). Combining this topological approach with dynamic theories of meaning, I will argue that linear order plays a crucial role in semantic composition and, moreover, that this role is essentially the same whether the word order is 'rigid', as in English, or 'free', as in Greenlandic Eskimo.