combinatorics

Flexible parts-of-speech systems, as defined by Hengeveld, are analyzed from the combinatorial point of view. All theoretically possible word orders in simple intransitive sentences are considered with the aim of determining whether word-order restrictions can be used as the only device that can eliminate the possible functional ambiguity in those languages. The answer is affirmative only for moderately flexible parts-of-speech systems. Specific sample languages are also analyzed, particularly with respect to the use of morphological markers in the absence or ineffectiveness of the word-order disambiguation strategy. It is shown that in most cases markers are either missing or not used to eliminate ambiguity.