The principle of scopal serialisation: Wackernagel position and mirrored Wackernagel position
Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna · 2021
According to Vennemann’s principle of natural serialisation (1983), ideally, all constituent operators are placed on the same side of their operands/ heads, that is, [Operator [Operand]] in OV languages and [[Operand] Operator] in VO languages. In this paper, unidirectional serialisation is extended to scopal ordering of elements in Wackernagel position and in the sentence-final “mirrored” Wackernagel position. The “principle of scopal serialisation”, which claims that everything else being equal, having scopal serialisation in the Wackernagel positions is preferred to not having scopal serialisation, is introduced as a part of syntactic preference theory. Different directions of serialisation are discussed with respect to their contribution to syntactic iconicity.