Deviations from canonical word order in oral Bashkir

Nikitina T. V. Otkloneniya ot kanonicheskogo poryadka slovv ustnykh bashkirskikh tekstakh. Acta Linguistica Petropolitana. 147.

This study explores word order variation in the oral corpus of Bashkir. Deviations from the canonical word order are common; they fall into several types and cannot be described in terms of constituent inversion as previously claimed. They can, however, be accounted for as dislocations into special positions before and after the main part of the clause, as well as into a focus position immediately preceding the verb. Within the main part of the clause, the order of the verb’s complements depends to some extent on their relative definiteness. More generally, the observed variation suggests that word order depends in Bashkir on information structure.