Investigating the Relationship between Case Marking and Word Order in Languages: A Cross-Linguistic Analysis using WALS Data

The relationship between case marking and word order in languages has been a topic of extensive research in linguistics. Different languages employ various strategies to indicate grammatical roles and establish word order patterns. While the specific relationship between case marking and word order can vary across languages, there are some general tendencies that have been observed.

According to Dryer (2013), in Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) languages, “case markers often function as the primary means of indicating grammatical relations”. On the other hand, languages with a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) word order tend to rely less on case marking and instead employ word order as the primary means of indicating grammatical relations. In SVO languages, the subject typically appears before the verb, and the object follows the verb. According to Lehmann (2015), “SVO languages have a relatively fixed word order and rely on position rather than marking to indicate grammatical relations”.

Greenberg’s influential work on linguistic universals (1963) identified correlations between word order and case marking. He proposed the famous Greenberg’s Universals, which include statements such as “If a language has dominant SOV word order, it is always postpositional.” This finding suggests a strong connection between case marking and word order, supporting the hypothesis that certain word order patterns are associated with specific types of case marking systems.

Furthermore, studies on specific language families have shed light on the relationship between case marking and word order. For instance, research on Indo-European languages, such as Latin and German, has explored how case markings contribute to the flexibility or rigidity of word order in these languages (Whitman 2008). Similar investigations have been conducted on other language families, including Finno-Ugric languages (Vilkuna 1989) and Austronesian languages (Chung 1998).

By building upon the earlier literature, the current research expands our understanding of language universals and typological tendencies. The study described in the text utilizes large datasets from the World Atlas of Language Structures Online (WALS) to analyze the relationship between case marking and word order in a broader cross-linguistic context. By employing statistical techniques such as Pearson’s Chi-squared test, the research aims to address the following research question: Is there a discernible correlation between case marking and word order across diverse languages? The hypothesis posits that case marking plays a pivotal role in indicating the grammatical function of nouns in verb-ending languages. The datasets utilized are sourced from The World Atlas of Language Structures Online (WALS), specifically Chapter 49 on the Number of Cases and Chapter 81 on the Order of Subject, Object, and Verb.