• In which cases is the mapping mediated by syntactic structure and in which cases does it suffice to assume surface restrictions? (Issues: agreement, quantifier scope, pronominal binding, heavy NP shift; Büring, 2013; Willer Gold et al., 2017; Bobaljik & Wurmbrand, 2012; Antonyuk, 2015; Culicover, 2013; Arnold et al., 2000)

• How do individual factors compete for being expressed by word order? (Müller, 1999; Titov, 2012; Tonhauser & Colijn, 2010; Levshina et al., 2023)

• Which notion of definiteness or referentiality, if any, correlates with word order alternations in articleless languages with flexible word order? (Geist, 2010; Titov, 2012; Šimík & Demian, 2020)

• Are relative ordering (X before Y, postnominal, etc.) and absolute ordering (X in position/specifier P, leftmost) qualitatively different phenomena, correlated with different factors? (Šimík & Burianová, 2020; Titov, 2012; Cinque & Rizzi, 2012; Neeleman & van de Koot, 2008)

• What is the theoretical status of canonical word order and word order types? (Goldin-Meadow et al., 2008; Namboodiripad, 2017; Gerdes et al., 2021; Haider & Szucsich, 2022; Ebert et al., 2025)

• Which factors govern the ordering of words sharing the same category or function, such as clitics, adjectives, or adverbs? (Marušič et al., 2024; Scontras, 2023; Delfitto & Fiorin, 2017; Martin et al., 2020)

• What is the explanatory power and scope of general constraints such as the final-over-final constraint in generative syntax (Biberauer et al., 2014), projectivity in dependency syntax (Chuprinko et al., 2025), or harmonic ordering (Culbertson & Newport, 2017)?

• Is there a way to systematically distinguish grammatical vs. processing word order constraints in experimental measurements? (Fanselow et al., 2002; Bornkessel-Schlesewsky et al., 2009; Fanselow, 2021)

• How is word order acquired during L1- and L2-acquisition? (Gervain et al., 2008; Westergaard, 2009; Smolík, 2015; Kotfila, 2023; Hopp et al., 2023)

• How and why does word ordering differ in different communicative modalities (spoken, signed, gesture-based)? (Coons, 2022; Cecchetto et al., 2009; Napoli et al., 2017; Goldin-Meadow et al., 2008; Gibson et al., 2013)

We look for quality submissions addressing these and related questions/topics, whether based on detailed analyses of individual languages or particular phenomena, or broader, typologically oriented analyses. Participants of any theoretical conviction or framework allegiance are welcome. Both theoretical and empirical (experimental or corpus-based) contributions are welcome. We hope that the workshop promotes cross-framework and cross-methodological communication and collaboration.

Antonyuk, S. (2015). Quantifier scope and scope freezing in Russian. Stony Brook, NY: Stony Brook University PhD dissertation. https://hdl.handle.net/11401/77744

Arnold, J. E., A. Losongco, T. Wasow, & R. Ginstrom (2000). Heaviness vs. newness: The effects of structural complexity. Language 76: 28–55. https://doi.org/10.2307/417392

Biberauer, T., A. Holmberg, & I. Roberts (2014). A syntactic universal and its consequences. Linguistic Inquiry, 45(2): 169–225. https://doi.org/10.1162/LING_a_00153

Bobaljik, J. & S. Wurmbrand (2012). Word order and scope: Transparent interfaces and the 3/4 signature. Linguistic Inquiry, 43(3): 371–421. https://doi.org/10.1162/LING_a_00094

Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, I., M. Schlesewsky, & D. Y. von Cramon (2009). Word order and Broca’s region: Evidence for a supra-syntactic perspective. Brain and Language, 111(3): 125–139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2009.09.004

Büring, D. (2013). Syntax, information structure, and prosody. In M. den Dikken (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax, 860–896. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511804571.029

Cecchetto, C., C. Geraci, & S. Zucchi (2009). Another way to mark syntactic dependencies: The case for right-peripheral specifiers in sign languages. Language, 85(2): 278–320. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.0114

Cinque, G. & L. Rizzi (2012). The cartography of syntactic structures. In B. Heine & H. Narrog (eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis, 51–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199544004.013.0003

Chuprinko, K., A. Novozhilov, & A. Stepanov (2025). Distance and projectivity as predictors of sentence acceptability in free word order languages. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling, SyntaxFest 2025), 108–119. Association for Computational Linguistics. https://aclanthology.org/2025.depling-1.11/ 

Coons, C. (2022). Nominal word order typology in signed languages. Frontiers in Communication, 6(802596). https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.802596

Culbertson, J. & E. L. Newport (2017). Innovation of word order harmony across development. Open Mind, 1(2): 91–100. https://doi.org/10.1162/OPMI_a_00010

Culicover, P. W. (2013). The role of linear order in the computation of referential dependencies. Lingua, 136: 125–144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2013.07.013

Delfitto, D. & G. Fiorin (2017). Adverb classes and adverb placement. In M. Everaert and H. van Riemsdijk (eds.), The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118358733.wbsyncom067

Ebert, C. C. Cathcart, B. Bickel, & P. Widmer (2025). Usage-based evolutionary models reveal context-specific word order change in Indo-European. Language Dynamics and Change, 15(1): 1-35. https://doi.org/10.1163/22105832-bja10039

Fanselow, G. (2021). Acceptability, grammar, and processing. In G. Godall (ed.), The Cambridge handbook of experimental syntax, 118–153. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108569620.006 

Fanselow, G., R. Kliegl, & M. Schlesewsky (2002). Processing difficulty and principles of grammar. In S. Kemper & R. Kliegl (eds.), Constraints on language: Aging, grammar, and memory, 170–200. Boston, MA: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-46902-2_7 

Geist, L. (2010). Bare singular NPs in argument positions: Restrictions on indefiniteness. International Review of Pragmatics, 2(2): 191–227. https://doi.org/10.1163/187731010X528340 

Gerdes, K., S. Kahane, & X. Chen (2021). Typometrics: From implicational to quantitative universals in word order typology. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 6(1), 17. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.764 

Gervain, J., M. Nespor, R. Mazuka, R. Horie, & J. Mehler (2008). Bootstrapping word order in prelexical infants: A Japanese–Italian cross-linguistic study. Cognitive Psychology, 57(1): 56–74. https://10.1016/j.cogpsych.2007.12.001

Gibson, E., S. T. Piantadosi, K. Brink, L. Bergen, E. Lim, & R. Saxe (2013). A noisy channel account of cross-linguistic word order variation. Psychological Science, 24: 1079–1088. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612463705

Goldin-Meadow, S., A. Özyürek, W. Soo, & C. Mylander (2008). The natural order of events. PNAS, 105(27): 9163–9168. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0710060105

Greenberg, J. H. 1963[1966]. Some universals of language with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In J. H. Greenberg (ed.) Universals of Grammar, 2nd ed, pp. 73–113, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Haider, H. & L. Szucsich (2022). Slavic languages - “SVO” languages without SVO qualities? Theoretical Linguistics, 48(1–2), 1–39. https://doi.org/10.1515/tl-2022-2035

Hawkins, J. H. (1983). Word order universals. New York: Academic Press.

Hopp, H., S. Schimke, F. Gastmann, D. Öwerdieck, & G. J. Poarch (2023). Processing to learn noncanonical word orders: Exploring linguistic and cognitive predictors of reanalysis in early L2 sentence comprehension. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 46(3): 686–709. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263123000451

Kotfila, J. A. (2023). The acquisition of word order: From strings to sentences. Doctoral dissertation. Washington, DC: Georgetown University. https://hdl.handle.net/10822/1087031 

Levshina, N. et al. (2023). Why we need a gradient approach to word order. Linguistics, 61(4): 825–883. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2021-0098

Martin, A., A. Holtz, K. Abels, D. Adger, & J. Culbertson (2020). Experimental evidence for the influence of structure and meaning on linear order in the noun phrase. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 5(1). 97. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1085 

Marušič, F., P. Mišmaš, & R. Žaucer (2024). Placement and ordering of the (en)clitics. In D. Šipka & W. Browne (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Slavic Linguistics, 365–384. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108973021.018

Müller, G. (1999). Optimality, markedness, and word order in German. Linguistics, 37(5), 777–818. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.37.5.777

Namboodiripad, S. (2017). An experimental approach to variation and variability in constituent order. Doctoral thesis, UCSD. https://www.proquest.com/openview/00f17e27a7a6d795692e73f0328f17c3/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750

Napoli, D. J., R. Sutton Spence, & R. M. de Quadros (2017). Influence of predicate sense on word order in sign languages: Intensional and extensional verbs. Language, 93(3): 641–670. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2017.0039

A. Neeleman & H. van de Koot (2008). Dutch scrambling and the nature of discourse templates. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics, 11: 137–189. https://doi.org/10.1007/s 10828-008-9018-0

Scontras, G. (2023). Adjective ordering across languages. Annual Review of Linguistics, 9: 357–376. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-030521-041835

Šimík, R. & M. Burianová (2020). Definiteness of bare NPs as a function of clausal position: A corpus study of Czech. In T. Ionin & J. MacDonald (eds.), Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 26: The Urbana Champaign Meeting 2017, 343–361. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publications.

Šimík, R. & C. Demian (2020). Definiteness, uniqueness, and maximality in languages with and without articles. Journal of Semantics, 37(3): 311–366. https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffaa002

Smolík, F. (2015). Word order and information structure in Czech 3- and 4-year-olds’ comprehension. First Language, 35(3): 237–253. https://doi.org/10.1177/0142723715596098 

Titov, E. (2012). Information structure of argument order alternations. Doctoral thesis, UCL. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/16238767.pdf

Tonhauser, J. & E. Colijn (2010). Word order in Paraguayan Guaraní. International Journal of American Languages 76(2): 255–288. https://doi.org/10.1086/652267

Westergaard, M. (2009). The acquisition of word order: Micro-cues, information structure, and economy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/la.145 

Willer Gold, J., B. Arsenijević, M. Batinić, M. Becker, N. Čordalija, M. Kresić, N. Leko, F. Marušič, T. Milićev, N. Milićević, I. Mitić, A. Peti-Stantić, B. Stanković, T. Šuligoj, J. Tušek, & A. Nevins (2017). When linearity prevails over hierarchy in syntax. PNAS, 115(3): 495–500. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1712729115