Recent approaches to scrambling phenomena argue that in
apparent cases of optional scrambling, there is in fact no
optionality. I would like to claim on the contrary that
scrambling is truly optional for definite NPs. Reinhart (1995)
and Choi (1996) do recognize that scrambling is optional in
many cases, but claim there can be no true optionality since
word order variants differ in felicity/optimality in a certain
context. My analysis of optional scrambling is based on the
radically different insight that adding a specific context
decreases the number of possible interpretations and therefore
increases the number of word order possibilities.
In principle, the referent(s) of definites can freely be
chosen within the domain of discourse, although certain
restrictions limit this free interpretation procedure. There
is no syntactic restriction, however, such that it can exclude
certain interpretations for definites in either the scrambled
or the unscrambled position. The use of a definite is
felicitous independent of whether it is scrambled or not. That
explains why even `predicate modifier' definites (such as `de
bus' in the Dutch example `omdat ik altijd om drie uur de bus
neem/ omdat ik de bus altijd om drie uur neem' = `because I
always take the bus at three o'clock') which are non-topical,
non-referential, non-anaphoric, non-contrastively focused,
etc., may scramble freely, especially when a context is given.
