Functional principles Several principles from pragmatics have been proposed as functional explanations of linguistic structures, often in a typological perspective. Theme first: languages prefer placing the theme before the rheme; and the subject typically carries the role of the theme; therefore, most languages have subject before object in their basic word order. Animate first: similarly, since subjects are more likely to be animate, they are more likely to precede the object. Given before new: already established information comes before new information. First things first: more important or more urgent information comes before other information. Lightness: light (short) constituents are ordered before heavy (long) constituents. Uniformity: word-order choices are generalised. For example, languages tend to have either prepositions or postpositions; and not both equally. Functional load: elements within a linguistic sub-system are made distinct to avoid confusion. Orientation: role-indicating particles including adpositions and subordinators are oriented to their semantic head.
Functional principles Several principles :from pragmatics have been proposed as functional explanations of linguistic structures, often in a typological perspective. Theme first languages prefer placing the theme before the rheme; and the subject typically carries the role of the theme; therefore, most languages have subject before object in their basic word order. Animate first: similarly, since subjects are more likely to be animate, they are more likely to precede the object. Given before new: already established information comes before new information. First things first: more important or more urgent information comes before other information. Lightness: light (short) constituents are ordered before heavy (long) constituents. Uniformity: word-order choices are generalised. For example, languages tend to have either prepositions or postpositions; and not both equally. Functional load: elements within a linguistic sub-system are made distinct to avoid confusion. Orientation: role-indicating particles including adpositions and subordinators are oriented to their semantic head.