The main goal of this article is to develop an approach to free word order structures in German that reconciles the findings of two different lines of research: competition-based models that center around the interaction of factors like definiteness, animacy, Case, and focus on the one hand, and optimality theoretic syntax with its violable and ranked constraints on the other. The analysis relies on the existence of a syntactic scrambling operation. The major claims are: (i) Scrambling is triggered by a subhierarchy of violable and ranked linearization constraints. (ii) Optimality under at least one linearization constraint results in grammaticality, optimality under the whole subhierarchy results in an unmarked structure (unmarked structures do not correspond to D-structures, as is often assumed). (iii) The distinction between subhierarchies and matrix hierarchies in optimality theory parallels the traditional distinction between weak and strong rules. It accounts for the difference between weak pronoun fronting to a Wackernagel position, which results in a fixed order, and scrambling to VP, which does not. (iv) Language-specific variation with respect to scrambling options is due to constraint reranking. * For helpful comments and discussion, I would like to thank

This paper shows that a version of the Condition on Extraction Domain (CED; Huang The single most important assumption of the present proposal is that the timing of edge feature insertion is crucial ('before' vs. 'after' in (iv)). Accordingly, the analysis can be viewed as an argument in support of a strictly derivational organization of grammar.

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