Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Slawistik und Hungarologie

26.3.2026 [zoom]

Haneul Choi (Urbana-Champaign): Information Structure and Object Order in Russian: An Experimental Study

Previous research on the relationship between Information Structure and word order has mainly focused on the left-/right-edge of linear structure. Less attention was given to word order variation involving constituents in the postverbal region, such as that of direct and indirect objects, as well as direct object and postverbal adjuncts. In this paper, the postverbal word order variation of ditransitives and postverbal adjunct structures in Russian was investigated through an Elicited Production Task. Russian is a discourse-configurational language where word order reflects the information structure of a preceding discourse context. This study aims to investigate the quality of Information Structure as reflected in object order after the verb in Russian. Also, by comparing the word order variation of these two structures with different syntax, this research questions whether the difference in syntactic structure can affect permutation motivated by Information Structure.