Cognitive loads and time courses related to word order preference in Kaqchikel sentence production: an NIRS and eye-tracking study

Abstract

The word order that is easiest to understand in a language generally coincides with the word order most frequently used in that language. In Kaqchikel, however, there is a discrepancy between the two: the syntactically basic VOS incurs the least cognitive load, whereas SVO is most frequently employed. This suggests that processing load is primarily determined by grammatical processes, whereas word order selection is affected by additional conceptual factors. Thus, the agent could be conceptually more salient than other elements even for Kaqchikel speakers. This hypothesis leads us to the following expectations: (1) utterance latency should be shorter for SVO sentences than for VOS sentences;(2) Kaqchikel speakers should pay more attention to agents than to other elements during sentence production; and (3) despite these, the cognitive load during sentence production should be higher for SVO than for VOS. A Kaqchikel sentence production experiment confirmed all three expectations. ARTICLE HISTORY

Revisiting the relation between syntax, action, and left BA44

“…languages, but a few hints come from recent work on Kaqchikel, an endangered Mayan language spoken in Guatemala (Koizumi et al, 2014(Koizumi et al, , 2020Yasunaga et al, 2015;Koizumi and Kim, 2016). First, however, the following caveat should be noted.…”