A Study for Syntactic Linearity Based on the Perspective of Linguistic Typology —Taking the English and German Declarative Sentence as Examples

Abstract

Based on the perspective of linguistic typology, this paper compares and analyzes the similarities and differences of the word order in English and German declarative sentences in order to seek the theoretical explanations for the feasibility of syntactic linearity. Starting from the analysis of word order of declarative sentences in English and German, “Two-steps Method” is recommended as judging the features of the source language’s word order before adjusting it of the target language so as to ensure the fluency, accuracy and legitimacy of the interpreting process.