Fwd: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order

[Frances Karttunen]

Because it does not mark case on noun phrases, Nahuatl tolerates an enormous
amount of ambiguity, not just between subject and direct object, but among
direct and oblique objects.  One wonders how speakers manage (or managed
before Spanish-influenced word-order at least moved subject noun phrases
around to preceding the verb).  But that is the way with languages.  Some
languages don't distinguish gender in third-person pronouns (no he/she in
Nahuatl or Finnish, as two examples).  Some languages do without plural
marking (Nahuatl in the case of inanimate nouns).  Some omit copula verbs
unless they have some really specific role in the sentence (Russian and
Nahuatl being alike in this respect.)  Some languages do without a future
tense (Finnish, which has none at all, and a lot of colloquial Latin
American Spanish, which replace the morphological future tense with a
periphrastic construction made with ir a).  It's a source of endless
amazement to people who study multiple languages how varied they are in what
they overtly mark (specificity versus nonspecificity in Nahuatl, for
instance) and what they express covertly or not at all.  (In Finnish the
fact that an action will take place in the future rather than happening
right now is sometimes revealed by the case of the direct object.  Who would
have guessed?)

Fran

----------
>From: "John F. Schwaller" <schwallr at selway.umt.edu>
>To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu
>Subject: Fwd: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order
>Date: Fri, Dec 29, 2000, 10:31 AM
>

>
>>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
>