Fwd: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order

[John F. Schwaller]

>Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 13:17:27 +0000
>From: Anthony Appleyard <Anthony at buckrogers.demon.co.uk>
>Subject: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>    Davius Sanctex <davius_sanctex at hotmail.com> wrote:-
> > Word order in classical nahuatl is very free, although it
> > seems to exists a dominant word order in which verb antecedes
> > object and subject:
>
> > VSO:  kwa in okichtli in michin 'the man eat the fish'
> > VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'the man eat the fish'
> > (I am not sure whether these two sentences to be equivalent) ...
>
>In that sort of sentence, with no case endings and free word order, how
>is subject is distinguished from object when the distinction is
>necessary? For example, anyone who has seen "Jaws" will know that the
>above sentence also makes sense with the subject and object swopped. And
>there are many other possible sentences where both alternative parsings
>make sense, much more so than with this example.
>Citlalya:ni:
>Anthony Appleyard