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I don't see how it's absurd. The point isn't that languages don't have word order constraints, it's that they're organized in such a way that word order is usua

I don't see how it's absurd. The point isn't that languages don't have word order constraints, it's that they're organized in such a way that word order is usually redundant with other things when it comes to expressing meaning. This redundancy is a real and nontrivial property of language which becomes obvious when you analyze it in a statistical and usage-based way, but which isn't so clear if you're focused only on the categorical formal structure.

suddenlybananas 1y ago
The redundancy is not a property of language it's a property of communication. This just speaks to the pseudoscientific nature of usage based linguistics; it's as if physicists claimed that heavier objects fell faster than lighter ones because a piece of paper will fall slower than a brick. You can't just look at the most frequent cases, you need to look at the actual edge cases to understand a phenomenon.
- famouswaffles 1y ago
  >The redundancy is not a property of language it's a property of communication. Meaningless semantics. Language is communication. It only exists and evolved to allow for more complex communication. Thinking of them as 2 separate things is just nonsensical.