Linguistic typology and language theory: The various faces of syntax

In this paper we discuss what syntax is today on the basis of all the theoretical and typological insights achieved so far; we also aim at proposing universals of sentence construction based on all the empirical research that has specifically been devoted to the syntax of the world’s languages. We show that a good way of doing syntax today is simply to sum up the results of both formal and typological approaches. Basically we need to maintain the distinction between a configurational and non-configurational way of constructing the sentence and abandon the idea that variation pertains primarily to morphology. As a matter of fact, sentence construction is constrained by pragmatic principles according to which either we have the SVO structure corresponding to the Given – New sequence, or apparent free word order corresponding to a [+ Prominent] – [- Prominent] pragmatic sequence.