f words in a language. ?If the words in a sentence fail to occur in a fixed order required by the convention of a language, one tends to produce an utterance either ungrammatical or nonsensical at all. ?For example,Р7РThe boy kicked the ball?*Boy the ball kicked the?*The ball kicked the boyРThe teacher saw the students?The students saw the teacherР8РPositional relations are a manifestation of one aspect of Syntagmatic Relations (组合关系)observed by F. de Saussure. ?They are also called Horizontal Relations or simply Chain Relations.Р9РWord order is among the three basic ways (word order, ic and areal来自一个地区的 classifications) to classify languages in the world: ?SVO, VSO, SOV, OVS, OSV, and VOS. ?English belongs to SVO type, though this does not mean that SVO is the only possible word order.Р10