Pozicinje

Pozicinje is a term used in linguistic typology to describe a pattern of clause internal reordering that serves to mark discourse prominence or stance. In studies of information structure, pozicinje refers to systematic rearrangements of sentence elements—such as arguments, modifiers, or auxiliary markers—intended to foreground a particular discourse topic or speaker attitude. The phenomenon is described as cross-linguistic but varies in frequency and constraint across languages.

Etymology: The term is a neologism coined in the early 21st century, blending a root resembling the word for position with a nominalizing suffix to denote a process. It is used mainly in theoretical discussions rather than in descriptive grammars.

Core patterns: Pozicinje typically involves fronting a focus phrase or discourse marker, or postponing a major clause element to a later position. It can interact with other discourse devices such as topic-focusing or evidential markers. Some languages display productive pozicinje-like alternations in informal speech, while others show it primarily in literary or performative contexts.

Examples: In a hypothetical language, the baseline order “A said that B gave C to D yesterday” can be restructured as “To D, A said that B gave C yesterday” to foreground the recipient. Another variant might place a time expression at the clause edge, as in “Yesterday, A said that B gave C to D,” to foreground temporal information.

Relation to existing concepts: Pozicinje overlaps with information structure, focus, and word order variation and is sometimes discussed alongside topic-comment and left-dislocation phenomena. It is distinct from the grammaticalization of markers or from fixed verb-second patterns in other languages, and its status as a universal mechanism remains a topic of debate among researchers.