Non-configurational Language
In generative grammar, non-configurational languages are languages characterized by a non-rigid phrase structure, which allows syntactically discontinuous expressions, and a relatively free word order. In configurational languages in contrast, the subject of a sentence is outside the finite VP (directly under S below) but the object is inside it. Since there is no VP constituent in non-configurational languages, there is no structural difference between subject and object. The distinction (configurational vs. non-configurational) can exist in phrase structure grammars only. In a dependency-based grammar, the distinction is meaningless because dependency-based structures do not acknowledge a finite VP constituent.
Read more about Non-configurational Language: Development, The Distinction, Controversy Amongst Phrase Structure Grammars, Controversy With Dependency Grammars
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“There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)