﹃語用論研究﹄ 第 17 号（2015 年）pp. 1-16
© 2015 年 日本語用論学会

The Effects of Givenness and Heavinesson VP-internal Scrambling and VP-external Scramblingin Japanese*
Satoshi Imamura
University of Oxford

The purpose of this article is to study the interactions between givenness, heaviness, and scrambling in
the Japanese language. It is found that, first, the effects of givenness are stronger in VP-external
scrambling than in VP-internal scrambling. This can be explained by the left periphery. Since thesentence initial position is relevant to information structure, VP-external scrambling is strongly influenced by discourse context. In contrast, VP-internal scrambling is unrelated to discourse context because there are no discourse-related projections within the VP. Second, it is shown that heaviness has
the same effects both on VP-external scrambling and VP-internal scrambling. Third, there is no interaction between givenness and heaviness: both concepts independently affected word order choices.
Keywords: Scrambling; Givenness; Heaviness; Corpus Analysis; Left Periphery

1. Introduction
It is a universal property of natural language to have many options for expressing
the same proposition. In Japanese, different word order permutations may be used toconvey the same propositional content. Hence, both SOV and OSV orders are possible,
as shown in (1). Saito (1985) claims that the OSV ordering is derived from the SOV
one by moving the direct object toward the initial position in the sentence. This operation is called ‘scrambling’.
(1)		a.
				
				
				
			b.
				
				
				

SOV
Taro-gahon-oyonda.
Taro-NOM book-ACC read
‘Taro read a book.’
OSV
Hon-o
Taro-ga
yonda.
book-ACC Taro-NOM read
‘Taro read a book.’* I am grateful to every person who supported my research. In particular, Samuel Hughes hashelped to increase the articulateness of the texts in this paper.
1

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What is the motivation for scrambling? Since it does not change the grammatical
relationships between constituents, in the 1980s, Saito (1985), Kuroda (1988), andFukui (1986) stated that scrambling is a semantically vacuous movement. However, as
Kuno (1978) points out, it is conceivable that scrambling is influenced by information
structure, because SOV and OSV orderings differ not in what they say about the world
but in how they are conveyed to the hearer (Chafe 1976; Lambrecht 1996; Vallduvi andEngdahl 1996). Given this analysis, it is proposed that information structure is at work
here. In order to examine the effects of information structure, the present study employed a quantitative Givōnian approach. Another motivation for scrambling is heaviness (Hawkins 1994; Yamashita 2002; Yamashita & Chang 2001). There is a generalconsensus that a complex structure involves higher processing costs than a simple structure. Grodner and Gibson (2005) stress that the limitation of a capacity for working
memory is the main source of difficulty in processing complex structures. Since scrambled sentences are syntactically more complex than their canonical counterparts, scrambled sentences are in general more difficult to process than canonical sentences (Koizumi and Tamaoka 2010). Yet, when a scrambled constituent is a very long one, scrambled sentences are easier to process than canonical sentences. In a canonical order sentence (2a), for instance, the parser must keep the subject keiji ‘detective’ until it encounters the predicate oikaketa ‘chased’ in order to form a nexus between the subject
and the predicate. During this process, the parser must store keiji in his or her working
memory. Hence, the processing cost is high. On the other hand, in a scrambled sentence (2b), the parser does not need to remember keiji for a long time because it is locally linked with the predicate oikaketa. Thus, the processing cost is low. It has been
said that heavy constituents are scrambled in order to reduce the processing cost.
(2)		a.
				
				
				
				
			b.
				
				
				
				


keiji-ga
se-ga
takaku-te gasshiri-shita hannin-odetective-NOM height-NOM tall-and big-boned
suspect-ACC
oikaketachased‘The detective chased the suspect who is tall and big-boned.’se-ga
takaku-te gasshiri-shita hannin-okeiji-gaheight-NOM tall-and big-boned
suspect-ACC detective-NOM
oikaketachased‘The detective chased the suspect who is tall and big-boned.’(adapted from Yamashita and Chang 2001: B47)

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of givenness and heaviness on
VP-internal and VP-external scrambling, using a corpus analysis. This paper is organized in the following way. Section 2 reviews previous studies about scrambling and the
Givōnian approach. Section 3 presents my corpus analysis of scrambling in terms ofgivenness and heaviness. Section 4 explains the results of my analysis on the basis of

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The Effects of Givenness and Heaviness on VP-internal Scrambling and VP-external Scrambling in Japanese3

cartography. I show that the impact of givenness is stronger in VP-external scrambling
than in VP-internal scrambling. On the other hand, there is no difference between theeffects of heaviness on VP-internal scrambling and VP-external scrambling; I demonstrate, moreover, that givenness and heaviness affect scrambling independently. It isthus reasonable to suppose that both concepts are needed in order to analyze the functional aspects of scrambling. Section 5 is devoted to the conclusion and further studies.

2. Previous Studies
2.1. Scrambling
2.1.1. VP-external Scrambling
It is well known that Japanese is a relatively free word order language. Syntactically, it has been assumed in general that the direct object in OSV ordering is moved
from the VP-internal position to the sentence-initial position (Miyagawa 2001, 2003,
2010; Saito 1985, 2009; Saito and Hoji 1983). This type of word order change is called‘VP-external scrambling’ because the direct object is moved to a VP-external position.
It should be noted that scrambling does not affect the grammatical relations between
constituents. Both SOV and OSV orders can convey the same propositional meaning.
Thus, scrambling appears to be a semantically vacuous movement. Saito (2012) observed, however, that scrambling has implications for the interpretation of topic marker
wa. In SOV sentences like (3a), as Kuno (1973) notes, only sentence-initial wa can beinterpreted as a thematic topic. However, in OSV sentences like (3b), when the wamarked direct object is scrambled to the sentence initial position, both the subject andthe direct object can have a thematic interpretation. Consequently, Saito maintains thatscrambling can count as topicalization.
(3)		a. Taro-wa (kyonen) sono hon-wa
katta.
				 Taro-TOP last year that book-TOP bought				 A.	‘Speaking of Taro, he bought that book (last year), but I don’t know
about other books’ (Taro=Thematic, that book=contrastive)				 B.	‘Taro bought that book (last year), but I don’t know about other people and other books’ (Taro=contrastive, that book=contrastive)
			b. sono hon-wa
Taro-wa (kyonen) kat-ta.
				 that book-TOP Taro-TOP last year bought				 A.	‘Speaking of that book, Taro bought it (last year), but I don’t know
about other people’ (that book=thematic, Taro=contrastive)				 B.	‘Speaking of Taro, he bought that book (last year), but I don’t know
about other books’ (Taro=thematic, that book=contrastive)				 C.	‘Speaking of that book and speaking of Taro, he bought it (lastyear)’ (that book=thematic, Taro=thematic)				 D.	‘Taro bought that book (last year), but I don’t know about other

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books and other people’ (that book=contrastive, Taro=contrastive)(Saito 2012: 158-9)

Moreover, Kuno (1978: 54) observed that Japanese word orders are determined by given-new ordering, which means that given information is mentioned early and new information later. In other words, scrambling is an operation to place given information inan earlier position compared to new information. In addition, Imamura, Sato, and Koizumi (2014) showed using a sentence comprehension experiment that OSV sentenceswere processed faster in given-new ordering than in new-given ordering. All of thesestudies support the idea that scrambling is discourse-driven.
Some scholars claim that scrambling is motivated by heaviness (Hawkins 1994;
Yamashita 2002; Yamashita & Chang 2001). Hawkins (1994) states that heavy constituents are scrambled to facilitate the processing. Specifically, Yamashita and Chang(2001) demonstrated that native Japanese speakers were prone to move long constituentsto earlier positions than short constituents in sentence production.
Summing up, two factors as explanations for the use of VP external-scrambling:
information structure and heaviness. Since information structure is a broad concept,
this study focusses on the effects of givenness, using a Givónian approach.
2.1.2. VP-internal scrambling
According to Hoji (1985), S-DO-IO-V sentences like (4b) are derived from S-IODO-V sentences like (4a). This word order change is called ‘VP-internal scrambling’
because the exchange between the indirect object and the direct object arises within VP.
However, Miyagawa (1997) argues that both S-IO-DO-V and S-DO-IO-V orders arebase-generated, while Matsuoka (2003) claims that which word order is canonical depends on the verb type. Watasu-type ‘to pass’ verbs take S-DO-IO-V as basic word order whereas miseru-type ‘to show’ verbs have S-IO-DO-V as canonical word order.
The validity of these hypotheses was tested by Koizumi and Tamaoka (2004), who reported on the basis of a sentence comprehension experiment that both show-type andpass-type sentences with the S-IO-DO-V order were processed faster than with the SDO-IO-V order. This result indicates that S-IO-DO-V ordering is canonical and that SDO-IO-V ordering is scrambled, because scrambled sentences take more processing
time than their canonical counterparts, generally due to the difference in syntactic complexity (Tamaoka et al. 2005). Koizumi and Tamaoka’s findings thus support the traditional analysis proposed by Hoji (1985) rather than the more recent proposals of Miyagawa (1997) and Matsuoka (2003). This paper accordingly presupposes that S-IO-DOV ordering is canonical and S-DO-IO-V ordering is scrambled.
(4)		a.
				
				
				

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S-IO-DO-V
Taro-ga
Hanako-ni
present-o
ageta.
Taro-NOM Hanako-DAT present-ACC gave
‘Taro gave Hanako a present.’

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			b.
				
				
				

5

S-DO-IO-V
Taro-gapresent-o
Hanako-ni
ageta.
Taro-NOM present-ACC Hanako-DAT gave
‘Taro gave Hanako a present.’

Assessing the functional significance of scrambling, Yamashita and Chang (2001)
observed that heaviness affected the choice between S-IO-DO-V and S-DO-IO-V orderings in sentence production. Participants produced S-DO-IO-V ordering more often in
long-DO conditions than in short-DO conditions. Regarding information structure, Ferreira and Yoshita (2003) investigated the effects of given-new ordering on VP-internal
scrambling. Japanese speakers were asked to answer questions like (5) by using a canonical sentence (S-IO-DO-V ordering) like (6a) or a scrambled sentence (S-DO-IO-Vordering) like (6b). Question sentences were used in order to establish a dative or accusative argument in an answer sentence as given information. Thus, otetsudaisan‘housekeeper’ is given information in (6) because she is referred to once in (5), resulting in given-new order in (6a) and new-given order in (6b). The results showed no interaction between givenness and VP-internal scrambling.
(5)		Question:			okusan-ga
otetsudaisan-ni
kansyashiteita. sorekara dōshita.
			housewife-NOM housekeeper-DAT thanked
thenwhat.happened			‘The housewife thanked the housekeeper. What happened next?’(6)		Answers:
			a. okusan-ga
otetsudaisan-ni
present-ookutta.
				
housewife-NOM housekeeper-DAT present-ACC sent				 ‘The housewife sent the housekeeper a present.’
			b. okusan-ga
present-o
otestudaisa-ni
okutta.
				
housewife-NOM present-ACC housekeeper-DAT sent				 ‘The housewife sent the present to the housekeeper.’Taken together, previous studies have reported that VP-internal scrambling is influenced by heaviness but not by givenness, as opposed to VP-external scrambling, where
both heaviness and givenness seem at work. What causes this difference? Or, is it a coincidence? One purpose of this study is to disentangle this issue.
2.2.

Givónian Givenness
Since ‘givenness’ is a vague concept, this study employs Givōnian givenness,
which Givōn (1983, 1994) proposed as a quantitative approach for calculating the topicality of referents. In this paper, Givōnian givenness is determined by Referential Distance (RD). The metric of RD measures the gap between a referent in the current
clause and its antecedent, using clause boundaries as units. If there is no antecedent in
the previous clauses, the RD is assigned a value of 21 because without some limitation

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it would be infinite.1 Hence the RD is expressed by some number of clauses from 1 to
21. What should be emphasized here is that RD is not a binary concept, and can express multiple degrees of givenness. That is, it is possible to state that some referent isolder than other referents. This is illustrated by figure 1.

Antecedent

TargetFigure 1. Image illustrating Referential Distance
Suppose that each square represents a clause and that black squares include the samereferent. In order to measure the RD of the referent in the black square furthest to theright (target clause), one must return to the middle black square. Since there are threeclause boundaries between the referent in the middle clause and the one in the rightclause, the RD for the referent in the right black square is 3. Although the same referent is once mentioned in the black square furthest to the left, this has nothing to dowith the RD of the referent in the black square furthest to the right. This is because
RD is the value of the distance between the target referent and its nearest antecedent.
RD is a well-recognized measurement that is easily implementable, and its employment
renders the results of my analysis reproducible.

3.

Corpus Analysis of Scrambling

3.1.

Basic Purposes and Procedures
The purpose of this paper is to examine the interactions between scrambling types,
heaviness, and givenness in Japanese. Previous studies have demonstrated that heaviness and givenness are important factors for the usage of scrambling. Yet no study has
examined the interactions between them. It is conceivable that scrambling is selected
only when a scrambled constituent is both heavy and given; alternatively, there may be acomplementary distribution between heaviness and givenness. When there are twocompeting factors, the strength of one factor becomes greater when the other factor isweak (Arnold et al. 2000; Trueswell and Tanenhaus 1994). If givenness competes withheaviness, scrambling will be chosen when it meets only one factor. Moreover, previous studies do not distinguish VP-external scrambling from VP-internal scrambling.

1
The limitation of RD is rather arbitrary. For example, Givón (1994) proposed that it should be 3
and Cooreman (1992) suggested that it should be 15 because there was no example with an RD higher
than 15. However, I observed sentences with RDs higher than 16, so I followed the criteria of Givón(1983) and Shimojō (2005).

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7

Recall that several studies observed a correlation between givenness and OSV (Imamura
et al. 2014; Kuno 1978), and no interrelation between givenness and S-DO-IO-V ordering (Ferreira and Yoshita 2003; Yamashita 2002). What makes this difference? There
are two possibilities here. One possibility is that there are interrelations between givenness and scrambling types. If this were so, we should observe the interaction between
givenness and scrambling in VP-external scrambling (OSV ordering) but not in VP-internal scrambling (S-DO-IO-V ordering). The other possibility is that the difference inmodality is at work here. The reason that the two studies produced apparently contrasting results may be that Imamura et al. tested sentence comprehension, whereas Ferreiraand Yoshita tested sentence production. In the present study, VP-internal scrambling iscompared with VP-external scrambling in terms of givenness and heaviness. To thisend, the RDs and the lengths of direct objects in OSV and S-DO-IO-V sentences aremeasured.
3.2. Method
3.2.1. Corpus Data
The Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (BCCWJ) was employed
in order to assemble relevant data. BCCWJ is designed to be representative of contemporary written Japanese and thus includes 100 million words from well-balanced writtenmaterials covering books, magazines, newspapers, library books, bulletin boards, blogs,
best-selling books, school textbooks, minutes of the National Diet, publicity of newsletters of local governments, laws, and poetry (see Maekawa et al. 2008 in detail).
3.2.2. Materials
OSV and S-DO-IO-V sentences were assembled from BCCWJ by using Chunagon,
which is a web interface program. With regard to OSV ordering, the string [o(ACC)noun-ga(NOM)] was used to extract OSV examples. The reason for using only strings
with subject NPs of minimal length is that the left boundaries of NPs are not marked in
the corpus. The limitation of my design is that it cannot pick out complex subjects
completely. Complex subjects modified by a relative clause in OSV sentences (e.g.
[[noun-ga-verb]-noun-ga]) were eliminated by hand in order to control the data. Thus,
the scope of the OSV-ordering string includes only a simple (non-branching) noun subject.
With regard to S-DO-IO-V, the string [o(ACC)-noun-ni-(DAT)-verb] was utilized.
Since there were too many unrelated examples, they were narrowed down on the basisof the verb meaning. Specifically, the GIVE-schema proposed by Shibatani (1994) was
employed and only examples that met (7) were analyzed.
(7)		
The GIVE-schema for Japanese			Structure: [NP1 NP2 NP3 GIVE]
NP2 = coded as an indirect object
				NP1 = coded as a subject

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				NP3 = coded as a direct object
			Semantics: NP1 CAUSES NP2 TO HAVE NP3; i.e.
				NP1 = human agent, NP2 = human goal, NP3 = object theme
				NP2 exercises possessive control over NP3,
				NP1 creates the possessive situation on behalf of NP2
(Shibatani 1994: 45)
3.2.3. Calculation of HeavinessIn order to measure the lengths of direct objects, the bunsetsu of direct objects
were counted. A bunsetsu is a basic linguistic unit in Japanese linguistics, consisting of
one or more content words followed by zero or more functional words. Generally
speaking, bunsetsu correspond to a phrase. The reason why bunsetsu is chosen to be
counted is that the length of the subjects in OSV orderings and the indirect objects in
S-DO-IO-V orderings is controlled in terms of bunsetsu. The bunsetsu­-count of thesubjects in OSV ordering and the indirect objects in S-DO-IO-V ordering is always 1 inmy data because they are a single noun plus a case particle GA or NI. In (8), for example, Dan-ni ‘to Dan’ forms a single bunsetsu because it is a content word Dan followed
by a functional word NI.
(8)		watashi-wa genkō-o Dan-ni
watashita.
			I-TOP
draft-ACC Dan-ACC passed			‘I passed the draft to Dan.’
(BCCWJ)
3.2.4. Calculation of RD
The criteria of RD calculation are partly drawn from Shimojō (2005), specificallythe criteria of back-channel feedback and adjacent predicates. Other criteria are myown. The following sections will explain the details of these criteria.
3.2.4.1. Bridging Relationships
Some kinds of inferable information are categorized as discourse-old information.
In particular, bridging relations are taken into consideration. Bridging is an inference
from a referent that is explicitly mentioned in the preceding discourse. In (9), the hearer must suppose that ringo ‘apple’ is a part of kudamono ‘fruit’. This is a bridging relation. Though ringo ‘apple’ is not directly referred to in (9a), its RD is 1 because
kudamono ‘fruit’ can be regarded as the antecedent.
(9)		a.
				
				
			b.
				

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Taro-wa kinō
kudamono-o katta
Taro-TOP yesterday fruit-ACC
bought‘Taro bought fruit yesterday.’shikashi, ringo-wa kusatteita.
butapple-TOP were.rotten

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9

‘But the apples were rotten’

3.2.4.2. Complex Clause
Complex clauses are divided into separate clauses based on predicates. Subordinate clauses are therefore regarded as independent clauses. For example, the complex
clause (10) is divided into two clauses because it contains the two predicates; nagameru‘look at’ and watasu ‘pass’. In order to illustrate the process of calculation of RD, let
us measure the RD of sore ‘it’. The first step is to check the antecedent of sore. Here,it is syashin ‘photo’ because it refers to the same object that sore does. The second
step is to calculate the clause boundaries between the target referent sore and its antecedent shashin. Since there is only one clause boundary between them, the RD of soreis 1.
watashita](10)		[1Martin-wa syashin-o nagame,] [2(S) sore-o Mortimer-ni				 Martin-TOP photo-ACC look.at(he) it-ACC Mortimer-DAT passed			‘Martin looked at the photo and passed it to Mortimer. ’(BCCWJ)
3.2.4.3. Adjacent Predicates
The V1-te-V2 form is normally placed in the same clause, but when V1 and V2 havedifferent subjects, each verb is regarded as belonging to an independent clause (Shimojō
2005: 57-8). For example, in (11a), the linked verb kat-te-kite ‘buy-TE-come-and’share the zero subject ‘I’. The V1-te-V2 form thus belongs to the same clause. In contrast, in (11b), V1 and V2 have different subjects. In other words, V1 motte ‘have’ forms
a nexus with tomodachi ‘friend’ and V2 karite ‘borrow’ forms a nexus with the zerosubject ‘I’. In this case, both V1 and V2 constitute an independent clause because they
do not share the same subject.
(11)		a. kyanberu-no suupukan kat-te-ki-te				Campbell-LK soup.can buy-TE-come-and				 ‘(I) bought a Campbell soup can (and came).’			b. dorai-no-yatsu-o tomodachi-ga motte-te (S) (O) karite				dry-LK-one-ACC friends-NOM have-TE (I) (it) borrow-and				 ‘A friend had dry (basil) and (I) borrowed (it).’(Shimojō 2005: 57-8)
3.2.4.4. Back-channel feedback
Generally speaking, back-channel feedback such as soo ‘indeed’ and un ‘yeah’ arepropositionally empty and are given by the hearer while speaker is holding the conversational turn (Shimojō 2005: 58). They are considered to be dependent on anotherclause and do not form an independent clause.

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3.2.4.5. Copula
Copula expressions such as da and dearu are regarded as predicates and hence theyhead independent clauses. Thus, in (12), the copula dearu identifies an independent
clause because clause boundaries are based on predicates in this study.
(12)		waga-kuni-wa
kokudo-no sanbun-no-ni-oshinrin-ga
			our.country-TOP land-GEN thirds-of-two-ACC forest-NOM
			simeru-hodo
shinrinshigen-ni
megumareta-kuni-deari…
			account.for-about forest.resources-DAT be.blessed-country-COP			‘Our country is a country that is blessed with forest resources such that twothirds of the land in our nation is covered with forests…’
(BCCWJ)
3.2.4.6. Proposition
The method for determining RD has been developed for calculating the discourse
status of a referent (Givōn 1983, 1994). Propositions are not included in this method
because they are not referents themselves, but relationships between referents. Insteadof directly calculating the RD of a proposition, the RDs of the related referents werecounted. In my approach, the RD of the proposition is the smallest value of the referents pertinent to that proposition. For instance, in (13b), the scrambled object is the
proposition Hänsel-ga naka-ni hai-routosuru ‘that Hänsel is trying to come in it’, which
includes the referents Hänsel and candy house. Therefore, this proposition has the two
related referents, Hänsel and candy house. In this study, the RDs of both Hänsel andcandy house are calculated. Note that the head of the scrambled object is nominalizer
no, but that it is anchored by Hänsel and candy house. Thus the RD of the scrambled
object is replaced by the anchoring expression’s RD, which is 1.
(13)		a. okashinoie-ga
aru-node hutari-wa
hidoku bikkurisuru
				candy.house-NOM be-because two.person-TOP very
surprised				 ‘Since there is a candy house, the two are very surprised.’			b. Hänsel-ga
naka-nihai-routosuru-no-o
Gretel-ga				
Hänsel-NOM inside-LOC come-try.to.do-NMZ-ACC Gretel-NOM
				togameru				blame.for				 ‘Gretel berates Hänsel for trying to enter.’(BCCWJ)
Results
This study analyzed 3273 examples of OSV clauses and 2229 examples of S-DOIO-V clauses from BCCWJ, and measured the RD value and the length for the scrambled direct object in each example. Table 1 summarizes the distributions of scrambled
objects in OSV and S-DO-IO-V orderings in terms of RD. It reveals that 2681 scram-

3.3.

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11

bled objects (81.91%) in OSV orderings and 1463 scrambled objects in S-DO-IO-V orderings (65.63%) have an antecedent.
Table 1. Tokens distribution of O in OSV and S-DO-IO-V in terms of RD

2

RD

Number of O in OSV (%)

Number of O in S-DO-IO-V (%)

1

1724 (52.67%)732 (32.84%)

2368 (11.24%)

222 (9.96%)

3

194 (5.93%)

131 (5.88%)

4102 (3.12%)

74 (3.32%)

5

61 (1.86%)

60 (2.69%)

6

49 (1.50%)

39 (1.75%)

734 (1.04%)

45 (2.02%)

837 (1.13%)

24 (1.08%)919 (0.58%)

23 (1.03%)

10

12 (0.37%)

20 (0.90%)

1114 (0.43%)

17 (0.76%)

12

15 (0.46%)

7 (0.31%)13

8 (0.24%)9 (0.40%)14

5 (0.15%)7 (0.31%)15

5 (0.15%)

11 (0.49%)

16

4 (0.12%)7 (0.31%)17

5 (0.15%)9 (0.40%)18

10 (0.31%)

3 (0.13%)19

10 (0.31%)

7 (0.31%)

20+2

5 (0.15%)

16 (0.72%)

20+ includes the examples whose RD are more than 20. However, their values are substituted for

20.

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12

NPM3

592 (18.09%)

766 (34.37%)

Total

3273 (100%)

2229 (100%)

Table 2 is the summary of the distribution of scrambled objects in terms of bunsetsu. Note that the subjects in OSV orderings and the indirect objects in S-DO-IO-V orderings are always 1 bunsetsu due to my design. Hence, more than one bunsetsu in Table 2 means that the scrambled direct object is longer than the subject in OSV or theindirect object in S-DO-IO-V orderings in terms of bunsetsu. Thus, heaviness correlateswith scrambled objects in about 75.95% of examples in OSV and in about 69.85% ofexamples in S-DO-IO-V, where the direct object is longer than one bunsetsu.
Table 2. The lengths of scrambled direct objects in terms of Bunsetsu
Bunsetsu

Number of O in OSV (%)

Number of O in S-DO-IO-V (%)

1787 (24.05%)

672 (30.15%)

21028 (31.41%)

818 (36.70%)

3564 (17.23%)

318 (14.27%)

4379 (11.58%)

159 (7.13%)5230 (7.03%)

108 (4.85%)

6109 (3.33%)

55 (2.47%)

7

61 (1.86%)

38 (1.70%)

8

44 (1.34%)

21 (0.94%)

916 (0.49%)

14 (0.63%)

10+4

55 (1.68%)

26 (1.17%)

Total

3273

2229

Next, a Pearson correlation test was conducted between RD and bunsetsu in order
to see if there is a correlation between givenness and heaviness. This revealed that
there is no correlation between givenness and heaviness in either OSV orderings (r=–.09, p<.01) or S-DO-IO-V orderings (r=–.014, p<.01). Therefore, the RD of thescrambled object is independent of its length.

3
NPM is an abbreviation of No Previous Mention. Following Shimojō (2005: 74), NPM is counted
as 21.
4
10+ includes 10 and more than 10 bunsetsu.

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4. Discussion
The aim of this analysis is to explore the relationships between givenness, heaviness, and scrambling types. First, givenness is likely to have a larger effect on VP-external scrambling than on VP-internal scrambling. In fact, 81.91% of scrambled objects
are given information in OSV while only 65.63% of scrambled objects in S-DO-IO-V
sentences are given information. Why is there such a difference between VP-external
scrambling and VP-internal scrambling? One explanation is based on the mapping between information structure and syntactic structure. According to Rizzi (1997), the sentence-initial position is related to discourse function. He presupposes that the left periphery (CP-domain) is used in order to express the interfaces between syntactic structure and information structure.
(14)		Split-CP
			[ForP For゜[Top* Top゜[FocP Foc゜[TopP* Top゜[FinP Fin゜[TP…
As shown in (14), the left periphery consists of many kinds of discourse-related projections. The CP shell is divided into a Force layer, a Higher Top layer, a Focus layer, aLower Top layer, and a Finiteness layer. Considering scrambling in terms of the left
periphery, it may be seen that VP-external scrambling is motivated by givenness because the sentence-initial position can have a relationship with discourse-related projections in the CP-domain. In contrast, VP-internal scrambling is not strongly influenced
by givenness because there are no projections for information structure within the VPdomain. On top of that, Diesing (1992) stated that discourse-anaphoric arguments mustmove from the VP-domain to the old information domain. This analysis suggests that
the VP-domain is a preferable place for new information. To summarize: givenness
seems to have strong effects on VP-external scrambling but to have weak effects on VPinternal scrambling. This difference may be explained by the existence of discourse-related projections at the sentence-initial position.
It is possible however that both VP-external scrambling and VP-internal scrambling
are motivated by givenness. Matsuoka (2003) contends that S-DO-IO-V ordering isbase-generated in sentences with a Watasu-type ‘to pass’ verb. Although it is unclear
whether Matsuoka’s classification is on the right track, if S-DO-IO-V sentences arebase-generated, they do not have to be motivated because there is no movement operation, leading to the conclusion that givenness makes no impression on some S-DO-IO-V
sentences. This may be the reason why givenness generally has a weaker impact on SDO-IO-V sentences than OSV ones. If so, it is technically feasible to maintain that
other S-DO-IO-V sentences are motivated by givenness. In addition, Miyagawa andTsujioka (2004) found that some idiomatic S-DO-IO-V sentences are base-generated, as
shown in (15). The reversed word order IO-DO leads to disappearance of the idiomatic
meaning te-ni-ireru ‘acquire’. However, it is not obvious whether there are verb classes
that prefer S-DO-IO-V as a canonical word order. Further studies are needed in order

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14

to answer the question as to whether S-DO-IO-V sentences with a certain verb type arebase-generated or not.
(15)		Taroo-wa kuruma-o te-ni
ireta.
			Taro-TOP car-ACC hand-in put.in			‘Taro acquired a car.’(Miyagawa and Tsujioka 2004: 21)

Second, heaviness has essentially the same effect on VP-internal scrambling as it
does on VP-external scrambling. In fact, heaviness correlates with 69.85% of VP-internal scrambled objects and 75.95% of VP-external scrambled objects. The difference isonly 6.1%. The effects of heaviness do not vary greatly between scrambling types.
When scrambling is chosen because of heaviness, the motivation for this grammaticaloperation is to reduce processing cost. It does not matter whether scrambled constituents are given information or not. There is no reason for heaviness to distinguish VPinternal scrambling from VP-external scrambling. This may be the reason why heaviness has the same effect both on VP-internal scrambling and VP-external scrambling.
Consequently, scrambling-type distinction is not important for heaviness.
Third, it has been shown that there is no correlation between heaviness and givenness in either VP-internal or VP-external scrambling. This fact means that heavinessand givenness independently influence word order choices. Thus, it is necessary to take
both concepts into account in order to explain the function of scrambling. This fact implies that there may not be a simple motivation for scrambling. Scrambling may be anamalgam of operations motivated by several factors. Other factors may therefore beneeded in order to explain the usage of scrambling with precision. Specifically, an alternative approach is indispensable to deal with qualitative data. As a quantitative approach, the Givōnian approach concentrates only on linguistic data and excludes otherfactors such as the speaker’s point of view and the relationship between the speaker andthe hearer. In order to complement the Givōnian approach, future studies will need totake other factors into consideration.

5.

Conclusion

The aim of this paper has been to probe the relationships between givenness, heaviness, and scrambling more closely. First, it has been demonstrated that givenness has agreater impact on VP-external scrambling than on VP-internal scrambling. This can be
explained by the left periphery. Second, there is no difference in heaviness between
VP-external scrambling and VP-internal scrambling. This can be accounted for by presuming that there is no need to tell VP-external scrambling from VP-internal scramblingin terms of processing cost. Third, there was no direct interaction between givennessand heaviness. This signifies that both givenness and heaviness have independent effects on scrambling. Though this study has focussed on givenness and heaviness, there

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15

may be other factors that have a great influence on word order changes. However, it
has been demonstrated that information structure affects scrambling. I therefore propose that a fruitful avenue of future research is to survey the functions of scrambling at
the discourse level.
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