Intra-Phrasal Construction: A Two-Layer Framework for Word Order Constraints

This working paper proposes the notion of intra-phrasal construction, focusing on the observation that word order and morphological ordering remain strongly constrained inside phrases, even in immediate, online speech. While inter-phrase ordering often allows flexibility through omission, insertion, and repair, phrase-internal patterns behave as stabilized chunks retrieved under strong constraints. Using examples from English (e.g., a green apple vs. apple green, because of the rain vs. of because the rain) and Japanese (e.g., auxiliary order and modifier ordering), the paper argues for a two-layer framework: (i) universal bio-resource constraints (processing speed, working memory, recoverability, repair cost), and (ii) language-specific local implementations (lexicalization, historical convention, morphosyntactic patterns). The boundary between these layers is real but often mixed in actual usage.This is English version of https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18280701(Japanese version)