word-order (n.)
A term used in GRAMMATICAL analysis to refer to the SEQUENTIAL arrangement of WORDS in larger linguistic UNITS. Some LANGUAGES (e.g. English) rely on word-order as a means of expressing grammatical relationships within CONSTRUCTIONS; in others (e.g. Latin) word-order is more flexible, as grammatical relations are signalled by INFLECTIONS. In later GENERATIVE linguistics, languages with fairly fixed word-order are called CONFIGURATIONAL LANGUAGES; those with fairly free word-order are NON-CONFIGURATIONAL LANGUAGES.