Word order variation in Kurmanji ditransitive constructions

Abstract The placement and realization of direct and indirect objects (henceforth DO and IO) in Kurmanji is subject to variation; e.g., DO and IO can be placed before or after one another in the preverbal domain; IO can be placed before the verb as an adpositional phrase, or, if recipient, it can be realized as a noun phrase (NP) after the verb. Although the postverbal variant has been the subject of a number of studies, the relative order between DO and IO in the preverbal domain has almost gone unnoticed. Taking a quantitative approach, in this study, first, we conducted a corpus study to observe the frequency of occurrences of IO in relation to the direct object and the verb, and to identify the potential factors that are involved in determining the choice of word order. Results indicated a clear preference for the DO-IO-V order. Definiteness of the DO, animacy of the IO, and the relative length between DO and IO are among the factors showing a meaningful effect. We next conducted a sentence production experiment to evaluate the effect of definiteness and animacy in a controlled manner. The results of our experimental study confirmed the effect of definiteness and animacy found in our corpus study. We further discuss the efficiency of each word order option in light of efficiency principles proposed by usage-based accounts of word order preferences.