Beyond subject and object: Toward a comprehensive relational typology

Contrary to common assumptions, syntactic relations, especially those of subject and object, are not universal, but are only one of sevcralpossibilities of organising relational clause structure. The three main dimensions of relational structuring are those of semantic roles, Information flow, and deictic anchoring. There are three major language types depending on the extent to which these dimensions are grammaticalised: "pivotless" languages, with no or little grammaticalisation of any of these dimensions; "pure" languages, strongly grammaticalising only one of them, especially that ofroles; "mixed" languages, strongly grammaticalising more than one. Genuinely syntactic relations, further differentiated in terms of their alignments (such äs accusative, ergative, active, tripartite), then resultfrom the cumulative encoding ofrole and flow distinctions in the mixed type.