Constituent order in Maltese : a quantitative reevaluation

Abstract

This paper examines the question of constituent order in Maltese in light of major approaches to it and previous descriptions of Maltese. Using a syntactically annotated corpus (treebank), a quantitative analysis of constituent order in various clause types is performed. This analysis confirms that the default order in Maltese is SVO (with VS in existential clauses as the only exception). Furthermore, it is found that the constituent order in Maltese is quite rigid, more akin to English than – as has been previously argued – to languages with pragmatically determined order.