Nahuatl Dominant Word Order

[Davius Sanctex]

>Sorry you got that impression, David.
Excuse me, I acted impertinently!
Discúlpeme fui algo impertinente!

>If you don't like controversy, then you should
>stand clear of academic writing quite generally.
I know well this situation :) spanish academic
world also makes use of controversial style too
much often!

>The paper is not about diachronic change in Nahuatl.
Certainly, my interest was primarily in diachronic change,
but one way or another I thank you for your fantastic article.

>"It should be emphasized that Baker's claims about polysynthetic >languages
>are implicational in nature. If a language has 2a and 2b, >then it will
>also have 2c-2n. To refute this claim, one must simply >exhibit a language
>which has 2a and 2b but lacks one or more of >2c-2n, as I have done here.
>In additional, however, by pointing out >that the linguistic features 2c-2n
>are in fact quite common across a >wide range of languages, I have tried to
>suggest that the particular >cluster of features Baker observes for Mohawk
>and attributes to other polysynthetic languages is a coincidence and not a
>consequence >of 2a and 2b..."

Oh yes, but what about a more intrincated implication, for example,
"2a and 2b and Condition X always implies some of conditions 2c-2n"
¿Le parece posible salvar la propuesta de Baker de esa manera? (complicando
un poco la premisa).


>>Text 1 is (see values of X2) strongly different from others.
>>Text 2 and text 4 are similar, and finally text 5 is similar
>>to all others.
>Interesting observations, but clearly not relevant to any point I was
>making.
Certainly!

>I caution against exclusive reliance on this sort of evidence, and >focus
>instead on grammaticality judgments collected from native
>speakers.
Lo leí, no lo pasé por alto. El artículo lo explicita
muy claramente.

>Taken together, all the evidence suggests that SE Puebla Nahuatl is >an SVO
>language which allows postverbal subjects and occasionally >preverbal
>objects for purposes of focus and contrast.
La primera muestra, "Ceh huelta onia Acapulco", la de Lidia Cedillo, es
claramente diferente del resto, y curiosamente también parece preferir VS
(althought the text is very short), ¿tiene alguna idea de porqué sucede eso
con el habla de esa determinada hablante?

>I think the textual evidence is extremely valuable, and while writers >may
>have tended to use one permissible word order more than another,
> >collectively they defined the same range of permissible word orders >that
>the native speakers (example 5, page 104) did.
Yes, and if one excludes from text the aberrant text 1 the evidence is more
clear; by these reason I think that it can be problematic the
choice of text (there is highly variable if one don't take care).

Tank you, for all, Jeff.
David S. (UPC, Barcelona, Spain)

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