Fwd: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order

[Michael Mccafferty]

I'm not up on word order in the modern dialects, but check out Andrews'
Analytical Grammar of Nahuatl. He has a lot to say on the subject of word
order.

Michael

On Fri, 29 Dec 2000, John F. Schwaller wrote:

>
> >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
>
>


Michael McCafferty
307 Memorial Hall
Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana
47405
mmccaffe at indiana.edu

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