Multiple Scrambling in Japanese: An Experimental Investigation

This study tested predictions of two hypotheses for scrambling. Cyclic Linearization (CL) argues that the word order established in a syntactic cycle cannot be overridden in a later cycle. Prosodic Scrambling (PS) claims that a string of words must be scrambled in syntax if it represents a syntactic constituent but scrambled at PF if it does not. Two experiments were designed with Japanese transitive sentences containing an adverb. Experiment 1, a production task, found that the A(dverb)S(ubject)O(bject)V(erb) order is overwhelmingly preferred with a modal adverb, whereas ASOV and SAOV are equally preferred with a temporal adverb. Experiment 2 examined acceptability of transitive sentences with the two types of adverbs in four orders: ASOV, AOSV, OSAV, and SOAV. CL predicts SOAV is underivable, while PS predicts all four orders are derivable. The results show that SOAV received the second highest mean rating, contradicting CL but consistent with PS.