ABSTRACT
In Turkish word order is variable. Changing the order of the constituents in a sentence is used as a means of distinguishing new information from background information and of making a certain constituent prominent in the discourse. Shifting the position of sentence stress also serves a similar purpose. Hence variations in word order, together with the position of sentence stress, affect the meaning of a sentence. Although there are many possible arrangements for the stressed and unstressed constituents in a sentence, here we discuss only the most common patterns of word order variation.
