This document discusses word order in Ixquihuacan Nahuatl. It argues that while the underlying order is verb-initial, discourse factors influence surface word order. Specifically: 1. Transitive sentences with two full NPs prefer SVO order for disambiguation. 2. Intransitive sentences most commonly have VS order, though SV is also attested. 3. When only one argument is overt, V-initial orders are preferred. 4. Topic is usually left-dislocated while focus appears sentence-finally through right-dislocation or clefting. 5. Word order variations are influenced more by information structure than a fixed lexical projection.

1. Order matters:
Problems of Nahuatl “free” word order
1
Mitsuya Sasaki
Northeastern Group of Nahuatl Scholars
Yale University, May 7, 2017

2. “Free” word order in Nahuatl
Steele (1976) on Classical Nahuatl
– VSO: niman oncān cāltiaV in tīcitlS in piltōntliO
‘Then the midwife bathes the baby there.’ (FC VI, 201)
– VOS: quinōtzaV in cōzolliO in tīcitlS
‘The midwife adresses the cradle.’ (FC VI, 206)
– SVO: auh in españolesS nō quinhuālmīnahV
in mēxihcahO ...
‘Also the Spaniards shoot at the Mexicas ...’ (FC XII, 57)
Pharao Hansen (2010) on Hueyapan Nahuatl, Morelos
– Basically predicate-initial order with high flexibility
2

3. Discontinuous expressions in Nahuatl
Classical Nahuatl
– auh yancuic conaquiah cuēitl huīpilli
‘And they put her in new naguas and huipil.’ (FC VI, 161)
– Zan nō yehhuātl Īxtlīltōn ahnozo Tlāltetecuīn
īnteōuh catca in huēhuetqueh
‘And Ixtlilton ... was the god of the old people.’ (FC I, 73)
Modern Nahuatl (Ixquihuacan)
– īwah tiyās n Luis?
‘Are you going to go with Luis?’
3

4. Non-configurationality (1)
Warlpiri
Maliki-rli ka kurdu wita kartirdi-rli
dog-ERG PRES child small tooth-ERG
yarlki-rni panta-ngku kulu-parnta-rlu
bite-NPST blunt-ERG fierce-PROP-ERG
‘The fierce dog is biting the little child with its
blunt teeth.’
(Riemsdijk, 1981)
4

5. Non-configurationality (2)
Diagnostics of non-configurationality (Hale 1982)
a. “Free” word order
b. Use of discontinuos expressions
c. Free or frequent “pronoun drop”
d. Lack of the NP-movement transformation
e. Lack of pleonastic NPs (expletives)
f. Use of a rich case system
g. Complex verb words
5
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6. Theoretical implications of “free” order
Hale (1982, 1983)
– Non-configurationality is a parameter (Linking Rule)
Baker (1996, 2001)
– Polysynthetic languages are necessarily non-
configurational since argument NPs are cross-
referenced adjuncts in those languages
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7. Haugen’s (2015) argument for
configurationality
Launey’s (2011) remarks on word order
– VSO as the basic word order (really?)
– Lack of OSV order
Pseudo noun incorporation
– Quicua nacatl in cihuātl
Impossibility of double focus construction
– *In calli in cihuātl quitta
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8. Puebla
©INEGI
San Francisco Ixquihuacan
Municipio de Ahuacatlán,
Sierra Norte de Puebla, Pue.
8
©Google
Ixquihuacan

9. DP structure in Ixquihuacan Nahuatl
Consistent use of definite article n
– n ātl (*n) sisik ‘the cold water’
The basic order is N+Adj
– (n) ātl sisik ‘cold water’
– *(n) sisik ātl (cf. sisik n ātl ‘the water is cold’)
– Exceptions: weyi, kwali, milāwak
• but: sē weyi kali ‘a big house’
vs. sē kali simi weyi ‘a very big house’
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10. Word order of adjectives in Ixquihuacan
Nahuatl
n ātl sisik ‘the cold water’
– *n sisik ātl
sisik n ātl ‘the water is cold’
n ātl sisik, wan n kafēn totōnki
‘the water is cold; the coffee is hot’
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11. “Epithet” in Classical Nahuatl
The position immadiately before the head noun is a
syntactic slot for an adnominal modifier (Launey 1994)
– in cuācualtin cihuah (adjectival modifier)
‘beautiful women’ (Crónica mexicáyotl f. 49r.)
– in tepotzohmeh cihuah (nominal modifier)
‘hunckbacked women’ (FC VIII, 49)
– in mahāltiah cihuah (verbal modifier)
‘bathing women’ (FC II: 209)
– in tēcpan cihuah (locative modifier)
‘women at the court’ (FC VI: 219)
11

12. Word order phenomena (1)
tiyās īwah n Luis?
(ō tiyās moīxkuya?)
‘Are you going with Luis?’
(or are you going by yourself?)
īwah tiyās n Luis?
(ō ākih n ok sē?)
‘Are you going with Luis?’
(or with someone else?)
12

13. Word order phenomena (2)
tiyās īwah n LuisFOC?
‘Are you going with Luis?’
(or are you going by yourself?)
īwah tiyās n LuisFOC?
‘Are you going with Luis?’
(or with someone else?)
13

14. Word order phenomena (3)
tiyās sakatlah mōstlaFOC?
‘Are you going to Zacatlán tomorrow?’ (or another day?)
mōstla tiyās sakatlahFOC?
‘Are you going to Zacatlán tomorrow?’ (or somewhere else?)
mōstla tiyās sakatlahFOC?
‘Are you going to Zacatlán tomorrow?’ (or don’t you?)
cf. Argument vs. predicate focus (Lambrecht 2003)
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15. Pragmatically-based languages
In some languages, word order is determined
by information structure:
– Mithun [1987] (1992) on:
• Cayuga (Iroquoian)
• Ngandi (Gunwinyguan)
• Coos (Pacific Northwestern isolate)
– Austin (2001) on Jiwarli (Pama-Nyungan)
etc.
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16. Discourse-configurationality
... ‘topic,’ serving to foregrond a specific
individual that something will be predicated
about ... is expressed through a particular
structural relation ...
... ‘focus,’ expressing identification, is
realized through a particular structural
relation ...
(É. Kiss, 1995)
16

17. Discourse-configurationality in
Ixquihuacan Nahuatl (1)
Topic (usually contrastive) is left-dislocated
– sisik n ātl (unmarked order)
‘the water is cold’
– n ātlTOP sisik, wan n kafēnTOP totōnki
‘the water is cold and the coffee is hot’
Non-contrastive topic is usually
pronominalized or not pronounced
17

18. Discourse-configurationality in
Ixquihuacan Nahuatl (2)
Information focus (É. Kiss 1998) appears at
the right of the sentence
– tiyās īwah n LuisFOC?
‘Are you going with Luis?’
– īwah tiyās n LuisFOC?
‘Are you going with Luis?’
Right-dislocated or stranding?
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19. Discourse-configurationality in
Ixquihuacan Nahuatl (3)
Frequent use of cleft sentences
– nin kawāyoh yuwi simi yōlik
‘This horse walks very slowly.’
– nin kawāyoh simi yōlikFOC n yuwi
‘This horse walks very slowly.’
(lit. ‘This horse, it is very slowly that it walks.’)
– n yalwa ōtikchīxtoyah yeh n ElíasFOC
‘It was Elías that we were waiting for yesterday.’
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20. Discourse-configurationality in
Ixquihuacan Nahuatl (3 cont.)
Cleft sentences in Classical Nahuatl
– coztic teōcuitlatl ca tlāllānFOC in mochīhua
‘Gold: it is on the ground that it is yielded.’
(FC XI, 233)
– ca nehhuātlFOC in namōtēchīuhcāuh in
niMotēuczōmah
‘It is me that is your governor Mocteuczoma.’
(FC XI, 31)
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21. What is the underlying word order of
Ixquihuacan Nahuatl?
Transitive sentence: SVO is most common
– n JuanS ōkimāakV n ElíasO ‘Juan hit Elías.’
– n kōkonehS kinikehV rrefrēskohO
‘The kids want soda pop.’
Intransitice sentence: VS is most common
– tikitokV n LupitaO ‘Lupita is working.’
– katkiV n motātahO? ‘Is your father in?’
“Split word order” (Gutiérrez-Bravo & Monforte y Madera 2010)
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22. Transitive SVO order with two animate
NPs
When both S and O are animate full NPs,
SVO is obligatory
– tleh n ōpanōk?
‘What happened?’
— es keh n JuanS ōkimāakV n ElíasO.
‘Juan hit Elías.’
— *es keh ōkimāakV n JuanS n ElíasO.
— *es keh ōkimāakV n ElíasO n JuanS.
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23. Transitive V-initial order with inanimate
object NP
When the object is inanimate, VSO, VOS are
possible (but not as frequent as SVO)
– ‘Levi is washing his car.’
• [VSO] kipahpākatokV n LeviS n īkārrohO
• [VOS] kipahpākatokV n īkārrohO n LeviS
• [SVO] n LeviS kipahpākatokV n īkārrohO
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24. Transitive V-initial order with only one
overt NP
When either S or O is a null anaphor, V-initial
order (VO/VS) is more natural
– tleh n ōmitspanōk? ‘What happened to you?’
— es keh ōnēchmāakV n JuanS. ‘Juan hit me.’
– tleh n ōkipanōk? ‘What happened to him?’
— es keh ōkimāakV n JuanS. ‘Juan hit him.’
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25. Intransitive V-initial order
Both VS and SV are frequent, but VS is
more common and unmarked (?)
– tleh n ōpanōk?
‘What happened?’
— es keh ōwitsV n LupitaO. (More common)
— es keh n LupitaO ōwitsV.
‘Lupita fell.’
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26. VS is more neutral than SV
Context: Everyone in the family is at the table for
dinner except Gabriel. They are wondering why
he is not around. Soon afterwards he arrives.
– Wan yōehkok n Gabriel. (Normal)
– Wan n Gabriel yōehkok. (Unhappy)
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27. Split word order in Ixquihuacan Nahuatl
Ixquihuacan Nahuatl is supposed to be
underlyingly verb-initial (for now)
– In intransitive sentences, the basic order is VS
– When a transitive sentence has only one full-
NP argument, the unmarked order is VS/VO
– SVO order has the function of disambiguation
27

28. Similar phenomena (1)
Tz’utujil: The basic word order is VOS but
SVO is more frequent in transitive sentences
(Dayley 1985, England 1991)
Spanish: Analyzed by some theoreticians as
a V-initial language (Contreras 1976, Groos
and Bok-Bennema 1985) while SVO is more
natural and frequent in transitive sentences
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29. Similar phenomena (2)
Yucatec: The basic order is probably VOS but
speakers tend to interpret two postverbal NPs
as a single compound noun (Skopeteas and
Verhoeven 2005; cf. Gutiérrez-Bravo and
Manforte y Madera 2010)
Mandarin Chinese: The basic order is SOV
but intransitive clauses of existence,
appearance, and disappearance has an
obligatory VS order
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30. Aissen (1990) on Mayan languages
Aissen (1990) analyzes the variations of word
order in Mayan languages by three principles
(Government and Binding framework):
1. Head follows its complement
2. Specifier precedes X' in functional projections
3. Specifier follows X' in lexical projections
Principle 3 is incompatible with the current
Minimalist (Chomskian) framework
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31. Word order in Ixquihuacan Nahuatl (1)
Underlying order of Ixquihuacan
Nahuatl: Lexically head-initial
– VOS
– N' + Adj
– N‘ + Rel
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32. Word order in Ixquihuacan Nahuatl (2)
But: Adv/PP + V‘
– īwah tiyās (n Luis)
‘you are going with him (Luis)’
– āmo kwali mota
‘it isn’t seen clearly’
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33. Word order in Ixquihuacan Nahuatl (3)
Discourse-configurational operations
1. NP-cluster splitting
• VOS → SVO under certain condition
2. Topicalization
• Left-dislocation of (contrastive) topic
3. Information focus
• Right-dislocation (?) of focus
4. Use of cleft sentences
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34. Problem of lexical projections
The “information structure” analysis (p. ej.
Aissen 1992) predicts that the V-initial order
should be more fixed than the derived order
Actually, VOS and VSO are equally attested
in both Classical and modern Nahuatl
cf. Steele (1976)
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35. Theoretical problems
(within Generative Grammar)
Discourse-configurational operations are
usually fronting or left dislocation
(Neeleman and van de Koot, 2016.)
A-movement vs. A'-movement
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36. Problems of focusing strategies
Why are there various ways of non-scrambling focusing?
– yeh n sentences
• n yalwa ōsēkichīxtoyah yeh n ElíasFOC
’It was Elías that we were waiting for yesterday.’
– n sentences
• nin kawāyoh simi yolīkFOC n yuwi
‘This horse walks very slowly.’
– Prenominal relative clauses
• kikakis tleh n milāwakFOC tlahtōl
’He will hear a real story.’
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37. Toward a configurational grammar of
Nahuatl
“Free” does not mean “random”
Recent linguistics have developed tools to
deal with the “free word order” languages
Word order matters!
– Describing/learning a language involves the
knowledge of how to produce a felicitlous
sentence in a given context (Matthewson, 2004)
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38. 38
Ōannēchmocnēlilihqueh! (Classical)
Tlasohkāmati! (Ixquihuacan)

39. References (1)
Aissen, Judith L. 1992. Topic and focus in Mayan. Language 68: 43–80.
Austin, Peter K. 2001. Word order in a free word order language: The case of
Jiwarli, in J. Simpson et al. (eds.), Forty Years On: Ken Hale and
Australian Languages, Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, pp. 205–323.
Baker, Mark C. 1996. The Polysynthesis Parameter. New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Baker, Mark C. 2001. The natures of nonconfigurationality, in M. Baltin and B.
Collins (eds.), The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory, New
York: Blackwell, pp. 407–438.
Contreras, Heles. 1976. A Theory of Word Order with Special Reference to Spanish.
Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Dayley, Jon P. 1985. Tzutujil Grammar. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press
É. Kiss, Katalin. 1995. Discourse Configurational Lanuages: Introduc-tion, in K.
É. Kiss (ed.), Discourse Configurational Languages. New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
.
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40. References (2)
É. Kiss. Katalin. 1998. Identificational focus versus information focus. Language
74: 245–273.
England, Nora. 1991. Changes in word order in Mayan languages. IJAL 57: 446–
486.
Groos, Anneke and Bok-Bennema, Reineke. The structure of the sentence in
Spanish, in I. Bordelois, and H. Contreras, and K. Zagona (eds.),
Generative Studies in Spanish Syntax, Dordrecht: Foris, pp. 56–70.
Gutiérrez-Bravo, Rodrigo and Monforte y Madera, Jorge. 2010. On the nature of
word order in Yucatec Maya, in J. Camacho, R. Gutiérrez-Bravo, and
L. Sánchez (eds.), Information Structure in Indigenous Languages of the
Americas, pp. 139–170.
Hale, Kenneth C. 1982. Preliminary remarks on configurationality. NELS 12: 86–
96.
Hale, Ken. 1983. Warlpiri and the grammar of non-configurational languages.
Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 1: 5–47.
Haugen, Jason D. 2015. Configurationality in Classical Nahuatl, in Proceedings
of WSCLA 20, pp. 56–70.
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41. References (3)
Lambrecht, Knud. 2003. Information Structure and Sentence Form. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Launey, Michel. 1994. Une grammaire omniprédicative : Essai sur la morphosyntaxe
du nahuatl classique. Paris: CNRS Éditions.
Launey, Michel. 2011. An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Matthewson, Lisa. 2004. On the methodology of semantic fieldwork. IJAL 70:
369–415.
Mithun, Marianne. [1987] 1992. Is basic word order universal? in D. Payne (ed.),
Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp.
15–61.
Neeleman, Ad and van de Koot, Hans. 2016. Word order and information
structure, in Féry, C. and Ishihara, S. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of
Information Structure. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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42. References (4)
Pharao Hansen, Magnus. 2010. Polysynthesis in Hueyapan Nahuatl: The status
of noun phrases, basic word order, and other concerns.
Anthropological Linguistics 52: 274–299.
Riemsdijk, Henk van. 1981. On 'adjacency' in phonology and syntax.
Proceedings of NELS XI, pp. 399–413.
Skopeteas, Stavros and Verhoeven, Elisabeth. 2005. Postverbal Argument in
Yucatec Maya. Sprachtypologie und Universalien-forschung 58: 347–373.
Steele, Susan M. 1976. A law of order: Word order change in Classical Aztec.
IJAL 42: 31–45.
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