The partially free word order in German belongs to the class of phenomena in natttral language that require a close in- teraction between syntax and pragmatics. Several competing principles, which are based on syntactic and on discourse in- formation, determine the [ineac order of noun phrases. A solu- tion to problems of this sort is a prerequisite for high-quality language generation. The linguistic framework of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar offers tools for dealing with-word order variation. Some slight modifications to the framework al- low for an analysis of the German data that incorporates just the right, degree of interaction between syntactic and pragmatic components and that can account for conflicting ordering state- ments.

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