VOS as predicate fronting in Chol

Coon, Jessica

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2008.07.006

Cited by 37 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 24 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Aissen (1992) has proposed more elaborate syntactic structures for Mayan sentences with these word orders, but her analysis agrees with England's in that VSO and SVO word orders are associated with more complex syntactic structures than VOS word order (see also Coon, 2010;Preminger, 2011).…”

Section: ) Y-e'-in-to'mentioning

confidence: 88%

Effect of Animacy on Word Order Processing in Kaqchikel Maya

Kiyama¹,

Tamaoka²,

Kim³

et al. 2013

OJML

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study investigated the processing load of transitive sentences in two different basic word orders (i.e., VOS and SVO) in Kaqchikel Maya, with a particular focus on the animacy of the object. The results of a sentence plausibility judgment task showed that VOS sentences were processed faster than SVO sentences regardless of the animacy of the object. This supports the traditional analysis in Mayan linguistics that, although SVO is the most frequently used word order, the syntactically determined basic word order is VOS in Kaqchikel, as in many other Mayan languages. More importantly, the results suggest that the processing load in Kaqchikel sentence comprehension is more strongly affected by syntactic canonicity than production frequency or object animacy.Keywords: Animacy; Sentence Processing; SO Word Order Preference; Syntax; Kaqchikel IntroductionAccording to experimental findings from languages such as Basque, English, Finnish, German, and Japanese, sentences in which the subject (S) precedes the object (O) (SO word order = SOV, SVO, VSO) induce a lower processing load for comprehension than those in which the opposite occurs (OS word order = OSV, OVS, VOS), and thus, they are preferred by speakers (Bader & Meng, 1999;Erdocia et al., 2009;Kaiser & Trueswell, 2004;Mazuka, Itoh, & Kondo, 2002;Sekerina, 1997;Tamaoka et al., 2005;Tamaoka et al., 2013; among many others). However, these previous studies on sentence processing have all targeted languages in which the subject precedes the object in syntactically basic word orders (i.e., SO languages). Hence, it remains unclear whether the preference for SO is a reflection of word order in individual languages or more universal human cognitive features. What we refer to as individual grammar theory in this paper posits that a language's syntactically determined basic word order has a low processing load in comparison with other possible word orders (e.g., Gibson, 2000), whereas what may be referred to as universal cognition theory hypothesizes that SO word order has a low processing load regardless of the basic word order of any individual language (e.g., Bock & Warren, 1985). To verify which of these two theories is correct, it is necessary to examine languages in which the object precedes the subject in syntactically basic word orders (i.e., OS languages), for which the two theories develop different predictions. Koizumi et al. (under review) conducted a sentence-processing experiment in Kaqchikel, a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala. The syntactically determined basic word order of Kaqchikel is VOS, although in general, word order is relatively flexible (García Matzar & Rodríguez Guaján, 1997: p. 333).They found that VOS was processed faster than the two other commonly used word orders, VSO and SVO. This suggests that the preference for SO in sentence comprehension is not universal; rather, syntactic features of individual languages significantly influence sentence processing load. In other words, the individual grammar theory, rather than the universal cog...

show abstract

Section: ) Y-e'-in-to'mentioning

confidence: 88%

Effect of Animacy on Word Order Processing in Kaqchikel Maya

Kiyama¹,

Tamaoka²,

Kim³

et al. 2013

OJML

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…England, 1991;Preminger, 2011;Tada, 1993; see also Aissen, 1992 andCoon, 2010, among many others, for other Mayan languages).…”

Section: Kaqchikelmentioning

confidence: 96%

Is the subject-before-object preference universal? An event-related potential study in the Kaqchikel Mayan language

Yasunaga

Yano

Yasugi

et al. 2015

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The processing load of sentences with different word orders in the Kaqchikel Mayan language was investigated using eventrelated potentials. We observed a P600 for subject-verb-object and verb-subject-object sentences as compared to verb-objectsubject (VOS) sentences, suggesting that VOS order is easier to process than the other orders. This is consistent with the traditional interpretation in Mayan linguistics that the syntactically determined basic word order is VOS in Kaqchikel, as in many other Mayan languages. More importantly, the results revealed that the preference for subject-object word order in sentence comprehension observed in previous studies may not be universal; rather, processing load in sentence comprehension is greatly affected by the syntactic nature of individual languages.

show abstract

“…In a Chol transitive where both arguments are 3rd person, A-bar extraction results in ambiguity -precisely the ambiguity that is blocked in the Q'anjob'al (21c), above. This is due to a confluence of the following factors: (i) both core arguments are normally post-verbal in Chol (the basic word order is VOS; see Coon 2010;Vázquez Álvarez 2002Vázquez Álvarez , 2011; (ii) nominals in Chol, as in all of Mayan, lack morphological case marking of their own; and most importantly for our current purposes, (iii) both subjects and objects can in principle be targeted for A-bar extraction. The resulting ambiguity is demonstrated in (22b): This ambiguity disappears if the arguments differ in their person features, since in that case, the agreement markers will disambiguate which argument is the subject/ agent/ergative, and which is the object/patient/absolutive: Crucially, ambiguity of the kind shown in (22b) never arises in a high-abs language like Q'anjob'al: if the verb is in its transitive form, the wh-phrase must be interpreted as the P argument (see (21b-c), above).…”

Section: mentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of case in A-bar extraction asymmetries

Coon¹,

Pedro²,

Preminger³

2014

Self Cite

128

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Many morphologically ergative languages display asymmetries in the extraction of core arguments: while absolutive arguments (transitive objects and intransitive subjects) extract freely, ergative arguments (transitive subjects) cannot. This falls under the label "syntactic ergativity" (see, e.g. Dixon 1972Dixon , 1994Manning 1996; Polinsky to appear(b)). These extraction asymmetries are found in many languages of the Mayan family, where in order to extract transitive subjects (for focus, questions, or relativization), a special construction known as the "Agent Focus" (AF) must be used. These AF constructions have been described as syntactically and semantically transitive because they contain two non-oblique DP arguments, but morphologically intransitive because the verb appears with only a single agreement marker and takes an intransitive status suffix (Aissen 1999; Stiebels 2006). In this paper we offer a proposal for (i) why some morphologically ergative languages exhibit extraction asymmetries, while others do not; and (ii) how the AF construction in Q'anjob'al circumvents this problem. We adopt recent accounts which argue that ergative languages vary in the locus of absolutive case assignment (Aldridge 2004(Aldridge , 2008aLegate 2002Legate , 2008, and propose that this variation is present within the Mayan family. Based primarily on comparative data from Q'anjob'al and Chol, we argue that the inability to extract ergative arguments does not reflect a problem with properties of the ergative subject itself, but rather reflects locality properties of absolutive case assignment in the clause. We show how the AF morpheme -on circumvents this problem in Q'anjob'al by assigning case to internal arguments.

show abstract

VOS as predicate fronting in Chol

Cited by 37 publications

References 24 publications

Effect of Animacy on Word Order Processing in Kaqchikel Maya

Effect of Animacy on Word Order Processing in Kaqchikel Maya

Is the subject-before-object preference universal? An event-related potential study in the Kaqchikel Mayan language

The role of case in A-bar extraction asymmetries

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About