The interaction of word order entropy and verb agreement: A token-based approach

Abstract

This paper presents the first token-based approach to investigate the interaction between word order entropy and verbal agreement. By analyzing 18 languages from the Multi-CAST corpus, the study reveals a unidirectional implication between word order entropy and agreement rate: Languages with high agreement rates tend to have lower word order entropy, meaning they exhibit more rigid word order. The observed implication supports the assumption that both flexible word order and agreement are used to manage information structure in discourse. However, the lack of statistical significance, likely due to the limited sample size, highlights the need for further research with more languages. Overall, the study contributes to our understanding of how languages balance different argument-marking strategies.