Behaghel's Laws describe the basic principles of the position of words and phrases in a sentence. They were formulated by the linguist
Otto Behaghel
Otto Behaghel (May 3, 1854 in Karlsruhe – October 9, 1936 in Munich) was a germanist and professor in Heidelberg, Basel, and Gießen.
He added theoretical contributions to the German and Middle High German language. He formulated Behaghel's la ...
in the last volume of his four volume work ''Deutsche Syntax: Eine geschichtliche Darstellung'' (published 1923–1932).
They include the following cross-language principles:
# Elements that belong close together intellectually will also be placed close together (Behaghel's First Law)
# That which is less important (or already known to the listener) is placed before that which is important. (Behaghel's Second Law)
# The distinguishing phrase precedes that which is distinguished.
# Given two phrases, when possible, the shorter precedes the longer. (Law of Increasing Terms (or Constituents))
It is thus ensured that the utterances that the speaker finds important will remain in the thoughts of the listener, in that they are at the end of the sentence. From Behaghel's Laws evolved the later
Theme-rheme. They serve together with other of his topics as suggestions for research in
Quantitative Linguistics
Quantitative linguistics (QL) is a sub-discipline of general linguistics and, more specifically, of mathematical linguistics. Quantitative linguistics deals with language learning, language change, and application as well as structure of natural la ...
.
Behaghel's law of increasing terms is also known as "Panini's Law" after the
Sanskrit grammarian
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
. This name was introduced by William Cooper and
John Ross (1975) in their study of English set phrases.
English examples include "free and easy", "lock, stock and barrel", "kit and (ca)boodle", etc.
Michael O'Connor (1978) has observed a similar statistical preference in the case of
Biblical Hebrew poetry.
[Michael Patrick O'Connor, ]
Hebrew verse structure
', ( Eisenbrauns, 1978), pp. 97 ''et seqq''.
Literature
*Otto Behaghel: ''Beziehungen zwischen Umfang und Reihenfolge von Satzgliedern.'' In: ''Indogermanische Forschungen'' 25, 1909, 110–142.
*Karl-Heinz Best: ''Otto Behaghel (1854-1936)''. In: ''Glottometrics'' 14, 2007, 80-86 (PD
ram-verlag.eu.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Behaghel'S lawS
Syntax
Quantitative linguistics