Remarks on the Relationship Between
Information Structure and Syntax
in P’urhépecha
Erik Zyman
Junior Paper, Spring 2011
Princeton University
Advisor: Prof. Robert Freidin
1
Abstract
Free-word–order languages seem like a problem for either the Y-model or mainstream generative conceptions of semantic interpretation. How can LF compute an utterance’s meaning compositionally from its syntax if the latter is extraordinarily flexible?
One possible solution to this problem is information structure (IS). If word-order variability is not just random but rather encodes notions such as topic, focus, and new/old
information, it becomes possible to hypothesize that meaning in these languages is computed at least partly from an underlying syntactic structure, without the need to invoke ad
hoc, seemingly unmotivated movements. Such a finding would also remove a counterexample to Bolinger’s Dictum. This study aims to shed light on the relationship between IS
and syntax in P’urhépecha, an isolate of central-western Mexico that permits all orders of
S, V, and O. The syntax used in pragmatically neutral contexts is explored (specifically
the headedness of various phrases). Then, the analysis of Capistrán (2002), which implicitly ascribes most or all syntactic variability in P’urhépecha to IS, is tested against a tentext corpus and found to be highly accurate. In particular, pragmatically neutral clauses
are SVO, whereas SOV makes the object prominent in a variety of ways. (However, elicited data show that SVO and SOV can seemingly both be pragmatically neutral in one
dialect.) VS is shown to have an IS interpretation not discussed by Capistrán: V = focused or new information; S = discourse-old and hence backgrounded (confirming a
claim of Soto Bravo’s (1982) briefly cited by Capistrán). A syntactic model that attempts
to associate the foci in O-focused OV and V-focused VS with a single position is shown
to fail, suggesting that these word orders involve different focus positions. Overall (aside
from possible SVO ~ SOV free variation in one dialect, which merits further research),
the hypothesis that P’urhépecha word-order variability is largely IS-based is confirmed,
indicating that this variability is compatible with the Y-model, tree-based compositional
semantics, and Bolinger’s Dictum.
Keywords: P’urhépecha, Tarascan, free word order, Y-model, semantic composition,
Bolinger’s Dictum, information structure, headedness, OV, VS, discourse-functional projections, focus positions, corpus analysis
2
List of abbreviations used in glosses
ACC
ACT
ADV
CAUS
CENTRIF
CLAR
COP
DEM
EMPH
F
FOC
FT
FUT
GEN
HAB
IND
INF
INTRANS
INTRG
ITER
LOC
LOCREPL
MID
N
NEG
NMLZR
accusative
active
adverbial
causative
centrifugal
clarificational
copula
demonstrative
emphatic
feminine
focus
formative
future
genitive
habitual
indicative
infinitive
intransitive
interrogative (mood)
iterative
locative
locative replacive
middle
neuter
negation
nominalizer
PART
PFV
PL
POSS
POSSREL
POSTPOS
PRELOC
PRF
PROG
PRS
PST
REFL
REINF
REL
RES
SG
SJV
STAT
SUBJ
TRANS
NONFIN
OBJ
nonfinite
object
=
?
1
2
2ST
3
+
+
participle
perfective
plural
possessive
possessive of relation
postposition
pre-locative stem expansion
perfect
progressive
present
past
reflexive
reinforcing suffix
relativizer
residential
singular
subjunctive
stative
subject
transitivizer
first person
second person
secondary stem morpheme
third person
portmanteau morpheme
noncompositional combination
of morphemes
clitic attachment site
uncertain gloss
3
Overview of Contents
I. Introduction
A. Background: Free–word-order languages and the syntax/semantics interface
1. The problem
2. A possible solution: information structure
3. P’urhépecha
B. The project
1. Objective
2. Motivation
3. Method
II. Capistrán’s (2002) analysis: summary and discussion
A. Summary
1. The location and function of focus, internal-topic, and external-topic
positions
2. Are internal and external topics distinct not only discoursefunctionally but also structurally?
3. How do pragmatically marked phrases on the left periphery get there?
B. Discussion
1. What drives the movement of pragmatically marked phrases to the left
periphery?
2. Why does the tree in (22) look so much more complicated than the
one in Capistrán (2002:354)?
3. The position of the contrastive-focus clitic =sï
4. What happens when there is nothing to fill one of the pragmatically
marked positions on the left periphery?
III. P’urhépecha phrase structure in pragmatically neutral contexts
A. Sources of data
B. The data
1. Negation
2. Quantifiers
3. Complementizers
4. Adpositions
5. Determiners
6. Verbs and their nonfinite complements
C. Summary
IV. Testing the claims of Capistrán (2002)
A. (S)OV
1. Capistrán’s analysis
2. Testing Capistrán’s analysis
a. Generic OV
b. Important new information
c. Countering of expectation
d. Contrast
e. Detail restatement
3. Possible counterevidence
4
4. Conclusion
B. VS(O)
1. Capistrán’s claims
2. Another discourse function for VS: V focused or new, S backgrounded
3. Possible counterevidence
C. Summary
V. The syntax of OV and VS
A. Are all the subtly different interpretations of OV induced by the same movement-driving feature?
B. Do OV and VS use the same focus position?
C. OV and VS as using different focus positions
VI. Conclusion
A. Summary of empirical findings
B. The state of the theoretical model, and some directions for future research
C. Broader implications
5
Remarks on the Relationship Between Information Structure and Syntax
in P’urhépecha1
I. Introduction
I.A. Background: Free–word-order languages and the syntax/semantics interface
I.A.1. The problem
Free–word-order languages—that is, languages in which the order of words and
constituents can display a high degree of variability—initially seem like a problem for
the traditional hypothesis that the meaning of a linguistic expression is determined in part
by its syntactic structure.
In most versions of mainstream generative grammar, syntax is the “generative component” of a speaker’s mental grammar, whereas semantics and phonology are “interpretive components.” In slightly less technical terms, this means the following. The main
“creative” work in the production or comprehension of an utterance consists of building
a syntactic structure by applying syntactic rules to lexical items. The utterance’s semantic and phonological representations (often called L[ogical] F[orm] and P[honetic]
F[orm] respectively) are computed on the basis of the syntactic representation. This is
the “Y-model” (or “inverted-Y model”) of language that has become the standard hypothesis in generative grammar.2
1
I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the three P’urhépecha speakers who have so generously
spent time and effort sharing with me their knowledge of their language and culture: Javier Mellápeti
Cuiriz, Prof. Felipe Cruz Celerino, and a third speaker who did not indicate to me that (s)he wished to be
mentioned by name. I would also like to thank Dr. Frida Villavicencio for the valuable advice, references,
and literature she gave me, and Violeta Vázquez-Rojas for her help as well. Finally, I would like to thank
my advisor, Prof. Robert Freidin, for our stimulating discussions and for the invaluable suggestions he
made to me throughout.
2
Unsurprisingly, other hypotheses exist. Bobaljik (2002:2) (citing Bobaljik 1995, ch. 6) proposes a model
called Single-Output Syntax that is similar to the Y-model but differs from it in some details. Jackendoff
(see, e.g., Jackendoff 1997:38ff.), criticizing the Y-model as syntactocentric, proposes a “Parallel Architec-
6
On this hypothesis, classic examples of ambiguity such as that in
(1)00 ??‘I saw the man with the telescope.
are explainable by appealing to syntactic structure. Suppose that, on the basis of examples of modification such as
(2)00 ??‘The [big dog] chased the [frightened cat].
we posit (3).
(3)00 ??‘Principle of Modification
??‘If an element Y modifies an element X semantically, then Y is a sister to X or
??‘to a projection of X.3
(adapted from Carnie 2007:174, (111’))
Then, assuming the grammatical architecture described above, it follows that the two
readings of (1) derive from a difference in their syntactic structures:
(4)00 ??‘I saw [DP the [NP man [PP with the telescope]]].
??‘I saw the man who had the telescope.’
(5)00 ??‘I [VP [V saw the man] [PP with the telescope]].
??‘I saw the man by using the telescope.’
On this account, the string the man with the telescope is a syntactic constituent in (4) but
not in (5). This hypothesis is borne out by constituency tests. For instance, if the string is
ture” in which phonology and semantics are generative components on a par with syntax, and hence “[t]he
grammatical structure of a sentence can be regarded as a triple, <P[honological] S[tructure], S[yntactic]
S[tructure], C[onceptual] S[tructure]>” (Jackendoff 1997:38). In Argument-Structure–Based Morphosyntactic Theory (Babby 2009, Babby 2010, Babby to appear), there are not one but two computational domains: argument structure and syntax. Grammatical-relation–changing operations occur in argument structure, and then the final or derived argument structure projects to syntax, where non–grammatical-relationchanging operations take place. And constructionist/functionalist approaches such as Construction Grammar (see, e.g., Goldberg 1995) aim to explain language in terms of constructions, or conventional pairings
of form and meaning; in this framework, syntax and semantics are claimed to be close to inseparable, and
neither is computed on the basis of the other.
3
I have adapted Carnie’s formulation of this principle to Bare Phrase Structure, which will be used in this
paper instead of the X’-schema. It seems that (3) is a legitimate extrapolation of (2) only on the traditional
view of adnominal adjectives as adjuncts. However, see Cinque (2005:317, (2)) for a different hypothesis.
Regardless of whether one accepts his particular implementation of this idea, the fact that adjectives tend
to be rigidly ordered within the extended projection of N, at least in languages like English, suggests that a
cartographic approach to adnominal adjectives that posits a rich functional structure may be more successful than the traditional adjunction hypothesis.
7
topicalized (producing The man with the telescope, I saw), [PP with the telescope] must
be interpreted as modifying man, not as modifying a projection of saw.
But free–word-order languages appear to throw a wrench into this account. How can
an utterance’s meaning (including properties like modification) be calculated from its
syntactic structure if the latter is extraordinarily flexible? We have already seen the hypothesis that modification must occur within the maximal projection of the element
modified; and modern generative analyses of “familiar” languages such as English suggest that θ-assignment is subject to a similar constraint.4 If these hypotheses are one day
confirmed in all languages, then we will have discovered two (hopefully unifiable) deep
and interesting properties of human language in general: that modification and θassignment both obey strict locality conditions. Do free–word-order languages rule this
possibility out completely?
I.A.2. A possible solution: information structure
Perhaps not. In languages that do not use rigid word order to encode grammatical relations,5 word order often turns out to serve a different purpose: expressing INFORMATION
STRUCTURE.
The information structure of an utterance is the “informational status” of its parts
within the discourse context in which it is uttered—in other words, which of its parts are
GIVEN
(or
OLD INFORMATION),
which are
NEW INFORMATION,
which are
TOPICAL,
which
are FOCUSED, and so on. An utterance that is well formed syntactically, semantically, and
4
Cf. the VP-Internal–Subject Hypothesis, for instance.
Such languages often “compensate” for their highly variable word order by expressing grammatical relations through morphological case and agreement marking. Although the term WORD ORDER suggests linear
order, I use it as shorthand for both linear order and the hierarchical structure that (partially or completely)
determines it.
5
8
phonologically—in short, grammatical—may nevertheless be infelicitous in a particular
discourse context, and the reason is often that the context is incompatible with the utterance’s information structure.
For example, the sentence
(6)00 ??‘I donated a COMPUTER to the library.6
is a felicitous answer to the question
(7)00 ??‘What did you donate to the library?
but not to the question
(8)00 ??‘To what institution did you donate a computer?
This is because, in general, the heaviest stress in an English sentence, accompanied by a
High pitch accent, must be dominated by the constituent in focus. In (6), this constituent
is an
INFORMATIONAL FOCUS:
7
it “fills in” the information “missing” from the question.
The informational focus in an utterance like (6) thus corresponds to the wh-phrase in a
wh-question. Because the wh-phrase in (8) (to what institution) is the Goal argument of
donate, we predict that a felicitous answer to (8) will stress and pitch-accent the Goal—
not the Theme, as in (6). This prediction is borne out:
(9)00 A: #To what institution did you donate a computer?
B1: #I donated a computer [to the LIBRARY].
B2: #I donated [a COMPUTER] to the library.8
As we have seen, one aspect of the information structure of (6) and (9) is expressed
prosodically. However, information structure can also be expressed syntactically. In Eng
6
In example sentences, SMALL CAPS denote the heaviest (most acoustically salient) stress in the sentence. In
English, stress often cooccurs with a High pitch accent “followed by a rapid fall” (Ladd 2008:49-50).
7
There are other types of focus as well, such as contrastive focus, presentational focus, and counterassertive focus (Devine & Stephens 2006:15).
8
The symbol “#” means ‘infelicitous’—in other words, grammatical, but not (pragmatically or informationstructurally) appropriate in the given context. In (9), the informational focus in each of the answers is
bracketed.
9
lish and other languages, another way to focus a constituent is to use a cleft, as in (10).
The focused constituent receives the by now familiar heavy stress and High pitch accent:
(10)0 A:
B:
#Who did the police arrest?
#It’s JOHN that the police arrested.
This example of syntactic expression of information structure—the cleft construction—is
relatively marked in English. However, other languages express information structure
through syntax quite regularly, and, unsurprisingly, their word order is generally freer
than that of English. For instance, this is true to some extent of Spanish (see, e.g., Zubizarreta 1998:125) and Russian (Prof. Leonard Babby, p.c.). When modern linguistics
discovered that information structure was responsible for much of the highly variable
word order of languages like Hungarian, the term
GUAGE
DISCOURSE-CONFIGURATIONAL LAN-
(Kiss 1995, cited in Devine & Stephens 2006:26, fn. 40) was coined to refer to
languages in which this is the case.
Two languages with a famously high degree of word-order variation are Classical
Latin and Ancient Greek. In addition to permitting many different orders of constituents,
these languages also allow what have been called “discontinuous constituents.” These
are groups of words that are clearly constituents semantically but are not adjacent in surface syntax:
(11)0 ??‘Classical Latin
??‘partem
suscipit vitiōrum.
??‘part.ACC takes.on vices.GEN
??‘He accepts a part of vice.’
(adapted from Devine & Stephens
2006:528, (5b), citing Cicero,
Tusculanae Disputationes 4.42)
(12)0 ??‘Ancient Greek
??‘tɛːn
tóː̀
agatʰóː̀
eːkóna
ɛː́tʰoːs
??‘the.F.ACC the.N.GEN good.N.GEN concept(F).ACC character(N).GEN
??‘the concept of good character’
(Plato, Republic 401b, cited in Devine & Stephens 2000:11, (16a))
10
If any language is to refute the Y-model (or at least current generative conceptions
of semantic interpretation), these two seem like serious candidates. After all, how can LF
determine the meaning of partem vitiōrum in (11) by the normal, tree-based principles of
semantic composition if these two words are nonadjacent? As it turns out, several researchers have argued that even the extreme degree of word-order freedom in Latin and
Greek is largely ascribable to information structure (see, e.g., Devine & Stephens 2006).
If this is the case, then perhaps these languages do not refute the Y-model after all. It
could instead be that sentences in these languages are generated as follows. First, a syntactic structure is built up that obeys the familiar locality constraints on processes like
modification, θ-assignment, and c- and s-selection. If the linguistic or extralinguistic context causes the sentence to be pragmatically marked9 in some way, the relevant words or
morphemes will be inserted into the derivation with strong features reflecting their
PRAGMATIC VALUES—for
instance, [+T] for a topical element or [+F] for a focused one.
Following the standard assumptions of checking theory, these features must be checked.
The only heads available for them to be checked against are the heads of
FUNCTIONAL PROJECTIONS
DISCOURSE-
such as Top(ic) P(hrase) and Foc(us) P(hrase) that occupy
fixed syntactic positions. Because feature checking must be local, each pragmatically
marked element moves to the specifier of the appropriate discourse-functional projection,
where it is checked against the relevant head in a Spec–head configuration. The informational status of pragmatically marked elements and the overt (pre-Spellout) syntactic
movements they trigger then affect both PF and LF.
9
In the terms PRAGMATICALLY MARKED and PRAGMATICALLY NEUTRAL, I use pragmatically to mean ‘with
respect to information structure’.
11
This is essentially what is proposed for Latin in Devine & Stephens (2006), except
that they do not explicitly implement their proposal using features.10 Devine & Stephens
give three possible analyses of (11) (pp. 528-530), but in all of them, partem vitiōrum ‘a
part of vice’ originates as a continuous constituent in the complement position of suscipit
‘accepts’. On the standard generative assumption that a moved element leaves behind a
trace or silent copy coreferential with it, LF is thus perfectly able to calculate the denotation of [NP partem vitiōrum] by the usual principles of semantic composition, even
though this NP is discontinuous in surface syntax.
This discussion has shown that, if free word order in a particular language can be
explained by appealing to information structure, then this word order once again becomes compatible with the Y-model. However, such an explanation relies crucially on
the hypothesis that pragmatically marked elements in appropriate discourse-functional
positions moved there from the “canonical” positions in which they usually appear
overtly in languages like English or Japanese.11 In order for this analysis to be convincing, it should be possible to determine a basic underlying word order for the language.
But further, we should keep in mind that for it to be truly convincing, we should have
independent evidence that the pragmatically marked phrases that were putatively moved
really did originate in “canonical” positions.12 Such evidence could perhaps come from
investigations of binding and scope phenomena.
10
It may initially not be obvious from Devine & Stephens’ trees that they move pragmatically marked elements to the specifiers of discourse-functional projections. This is because they abbreviate their trees by
showing only the specifiers of these projections and not their heads (p. 26).
11
Or, in a nontransformational framework such as GPSG, that they are coreferential with silent gaps in
these canonical positions.
12
As a matter of fact, Devine & Stephens (2006) do not subscribe to this hypothesis. They state:
Although we do not literally believe that YP starts out at the foot of the chain (its basic complement position in XP) and then moves to a functional position higher in the tree, the movement metaphor provides
12
I.A.3. P’urhépecha
One example of a free–word-order language is P’urhépecha, also known as Tarascan. This language is spoken by over 100,000 people (INEGI 2009:83), primarily in the
central-western state of Michoacán, Mexico.13 P’urhépecha, a language isolate, is
an agglutinating language with a moderate amount of inflectional morphology (Wares
(1974)), including overt case marking, and extensive derivational morphology, which is exclusively suffixing (Mendoza (2007)). (Zyman, MS, 2011:6)
I have called P’urhépecha a free–word-order language because it allows all orders of
S, V, and O. It is already known that the choice between the six possible orders is determined to a great extent by information structure (Dr. Frida Villavicencio, p.c.; see also
Chamoreau 2007:134-136).
The main reference for the impact of information structure on syntax in P’urhépecha
is Capistrán (2002).14 Capistrán does not explicitly claim that all the word-order variation in P’urhépecha can be attributed to information structure. However, her proposal for
the relationship between P’urhépecha information structure and syntax certainly provides
a framework for testing this hypothesis. The “big picture” that emerges from her study is
that a P’urhépecha clause, shown with all its possible discourse-functional projections,
looks like this (Capistrán 2002:354):
such a convenient framework in which to discuss Latin syntax that we shall adopt it (p. 28).
Their Fig. 2 (p. 27) shows what a nonderivational approach would look like: the complement YP of a head
X can be directly inserted into the canonical complement position or into the specifier of either the Foc or
the Top head immediately on top of XP. On this hypothesis, processes such as case and θ-assignment,
modification, and c- and s-selection must not be subject to as strict locality conditions, and so either the Ymodel or the principles of semantic composition must presumably be revised.
13
For more statistics on the size and geographic distribution of the P’urhépecha-speaking population, including speakers in the U.S., see Zyman (MS, 2011:6, fn. 7).
14
Capistrán (2002) is based solely on data from the Lake of Pátzcuaro (Eastern) dialect area (see (15)).
However, we will be testing her analysis against data from several dialects, in order to determine to what
extent it can be applied to P’urhépecha in general.
13
(13)0
??‘
This structure will be explained and discussed in section II.A.
I.B. The project
I.B.1. Objective
The purpose of this study is to deepen our understanding of the relationship between
information structure and syntax in P’urhépecha. This will be done by testing the accuracy of the picture presented by Capistrán (2002), according to which the seemingly very
flexible word order of P’urhépecha can be explained by appealing to information structure. The method is described in greater detail in section I.B.3, “Method.”
I.B.2. Motivation
This inquiry is important because, if the word-order freedom of P’urhépecha cannot
be given a satisfying explanation on information-structural (or other) grounds—in other
words, if the language displays widespread free variation rather than conditioned variation—then there will be two significant consequences.
14
First, our account of the relationship between syntax and semantics in P’urhépecha
will be forced to incorporate one of the following interesting conclusions:
1. The semantics of a P’urhépecha utterance cannot be computed compositionally
from its syntactic structure.
2. The semantics of a P’urhépecha utterance is computed compositionally from its
underlying syntactic structure; but on the way to PF, this structure is transformed
by movements with no apparent motivation.
3. The semantics of a P’urhépecha utterance is computed compositionally from its
hierarchical syntactic structure; but some of the nodes in this structure are indifferent to linearization (as in Contreras 2007:69). If a node A immediately dominates two nodes B and C, and A is indifferent to linearization, then the linear order of its daughters at PF can be [B C] or [C B].15 Assuming the Y-model, and
that linearization occurs between Spellout and PF, the choice between these two
linear orders should have no effect on interpretation. This is because, on these assumptions, LF traffics only in nonlinearized hierarchical structures (Heim &
Kratzer 1998:44, Contreras 2007:69).
The preceding discussion has focused on how the discovery of truly free variation in
P’urhépecha word order would affect current generative hypotheses about the syn
15
I have assumed binary branching in this example, but I do not mean to prejudge the issue, particularly in
a language like P’urhépecha whose syntax has not been studied extensively. Naturally, the concept of a
linearization-indifferent node is also compatible with >2-ary branching: if a linearization-indifferent node
D immediately dominates three nodes E, F, and G, then there will be 6 (= 3!) possible linear orders. If, on
the other hand, a node H dominates three nodes I, J, and K, but the only grammatical linear orders are [I J
K] and [I K J], then it would appear that we have a binary-branching hierarchical structure [H I [L J K]],
with the node L indifferent to linearization.
15
tax/semantics interface. But such a finding would also be relevant to a “big question”
that transcends any particular theoretical framework. To wit, it would constitute counterevidence to the following important hypothesis:
(14)0 ??‘Bolinger’s Dictum
(Bolinger 1968:127, cited in Goldberg 1995:316)
??‘A difference in syntactic form always spells a difference in meaning.
Although it seems that Bolinger’s Dictum has mostly been discussed in nongenerative
circles, it finds an approximate generative counterpart in the widely professed desideratum that movement always be motivated.17
I.B.3. Method
Two sources of data were used to test the claims of Capistrán (2002) and continue
elucidating the relationship between information structure and syntax in P’urhépecha.
First, ten texts were analyzed, with particular attention to the pragmatic values of constituents (topical, focused, new information, old information, …) and how they correlated with the constituents’ syntactic position. The texts used were the following:
16
Goldberg, who calls (14) the Principle of No Synonymy of Grammatical Forms, provides a list of researchers who have proposed the hypothesis. Both Zwicky (2007) and Grano & Zwicky (2006:4) offer
versions of Bolinger’s Dictum hedged by Zwicky. Distilling the two versions into one, we get the following:
Lexical and syntactic variation is unfree; variants rarely differ merely in style, but usually have (subtly) different meanings or discourse functions, which can be observed in certain contexts (though these differences
might not be of consequence in many contexts).
Suppose that, following this “hedged version” (as it is called in both sources), we allow that truly free
variation is possible but rare. In this case, the discovery of this phenomenon in P’urhépecha word order
will still be of interest, because we will want to know how rare it is.
17
This is not to say that this desideratum is necessarily universal among generative linguists. For instance,
Cinque (2005) proposes that all the surface orders of the elements Dem(onstrative), Num(eral),
A(djective), and N(oun) in the world’s languages are derived by various movements from the structure
[Dem [Num [A [N]]]]; but he does not propose a motivation for these movements, in terms of feature
checking or anything else.
16
(15)0 #
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Title
—
Origin
Ichupio,
Michoacán
Dialect area18
h
Narrative: “Naná k éri
h
ká tatá k éri ká pwérta”
(“The Old Woman, the
Old Man, and the Door”)
(“Dialogue”)
“Wantántskwa ma
warhíiti pʼorhépecha”
(“Narrative of a
P’urhépecha Woman”)
h
“takari kúnts ika”
(“Gathering Takari”19)
“Chaari Sesekua
Jimpo” (“With Your
Permission”)
“Kurhamukua”
(“Editorial”)
8
“Kurhamukua”
(“Editorial”)
9
“Nani eŋga na jindëka
para komaɹini”
(“Jesus and prayer”)
10
“Uandántskua tatá
janíkuari”
(“The god of rain”)
Jarácuaro,
Michoacán
Puácuaro,
Michoacán (Capistrán Garza
2004:61, fn. 2)
Tiríndaro,
Michoacán
(Chamoreau
2004:95)
Santa Fe de la
Laguna
(Nava L.
2004:136)
Turícuaro
Lake Pátzcuaro
(Eastern region)
Marsh of Zacapu20
(Ciénaga de
Zacapu; Northeastern region)
Lake Pátzcuaro
(Eastern region)
the P’urhépecha
Plateau21 (Meseta22)
Source
Foster (1969:188194)
Chamoreau (2003:3748)
Chamoreau (2003:4854)
Capistrán Garza
(2004:61-93)
Chamoreau (2004:95131)
Nava L. (2004:137145) (originally published as Uárhi 1998)
Nava L. (2004:145152) (originally published as Hernández
Dimas 1998)
Nava L. (2004:153169) (originally published as Uárhi 2002)
Villavicencio Zarza
(2006:430-433)
(originally published
as Lathrop 1960:24)
Villavicencio Zarza
(2006:434-441)
(originally published
as Rincón Romero
1990)
Secondly, the predictions of particular syntactic models were tested by eliciting data
from three native speakers whom I contacted over the Internet.
18
The data in this column are from Chamoreau (2005:2) unless otherwise indicated.
Takari (Spanish: tabardillo) is a wild plant (Piqueria trinervia) “used to decorate the Purepecha houses
and cover the floors during the Christmas festivities” (Chamoreau 2004:131).
20
Translation from UNESCO (2010:3).
21
UNESCO (2010:3).
22
Vázquez-Rojas Maldonado (2011), fn. 1.
19
17
II. Capistrán’s (2002) analysis: summary and discussion
As mentioned above, a major goal of this study was to test the accuracy of Capistrán’s (2002) analysis of the relationship between P’urhépecha syntax and information
structure. I will therefore now give an overview of what this analysis is, followed by
some discussion.
II.A. Summary
II.A.1. The location and function of focus, internal-topic, and external-topic positions
Consider once again (13) (repeated here as (16)), Capistrán’s proposal for the structure of a P’urhépecha clause shown with all its potential discourse-functional projections:
(16)0
??‘
According to Capistrán, the functions of the positions in (16) are as follows.23
23
The names I use for these syntactic positions are translations; Capistrán (2002) is written in Spanish. My
FocP translates her FFUN (Frase Funcional ‘Functional Phrase’). What I have called TopExtP she actually calls E (for enunciado ‘statement’); but because she does not indicate the function of this level of
structure except to note that external topics appear in its specifier, I have assumed that E corresponds to the
maximal projection of a head TopExt°.
18
1. SpecFocP hosts phrases marked with the contrastive-focus clitic =sï (pp. 353,
357).
2. SpecCP24 hosts what Capistrán calls INTERNAL TOPICS (boldfaced in (17)). These
are constituents that have been topicalized; intuitively, they bear a tight syntactic
relation to the main body of the clause, as evidenced by the fact that they are
linked to a gap within IP25 (p. 353):
24
The structure proposed by Capistrán (see (16)) predicts that the linear order of left-peripheral elements
should be [external topic – internal topic – C – focus=sï]. This is very similar to the “CP layer” posited for
Latin by Devine & Stephens (2006:28). However, it is different from that proposed by Rizzi (1997:297,
(41)) (see (25) in the text). On the basis of Italian distributional evidence, Rizzi argues the following.
There is no unitary C position. Instead, the Italian complementizer che is in the Force position, whereas the
complementizer di is in the Fin(iteness) position. Of course, this analysis should not be extended to
P’urhépecha unless there is actual evidence that this language has more than one C position.
As a matter of fact, the location of the one C position Capistrán does posit is not supported in her article, because none of her examples contain overt complementizers (since all or virtually all of them involve
main rather than embedded clauses). I have verified by elicitation that, as predicted by (16), C does in fact
precede a left-peripheral focused phrase in P’urhépecha:
(i)00
??‘Miteskani eski ma tsuntsunisï Pedru piatini.
(i)00
??‘Mi
??‘?
(i)00
??‘ma
??‘a
(i)00
??‘I know that it’s a POT that Peter bought.’
(elicited from Speaker 2; based on Capistrán 2002:378, (27b))
-te
-LOCREPL/LOC(face)
tsuntsu
pot
-ni
-ACC
-s
-PFV
=sï
=FOC
-∅
-PRS
Pedru
Peter
-ka
-IND+1
pia
buy
=ni
=SUBJ.1.SG
-∅
-PFV
-∅
-PRS
eski
that
-ti
-IND+3
-ni.
-?
Whether, as predicted by (16), C does in fact follow external and internal topics remains an open question
that should likewise be investigated by examining embedded clauses. (On the meaning of the root mi- in
miteskani ‘I know’, see Capistrán Garza 2004:72, fn. 29.)
25
I use IP to translate what Capistrán calls FF (for Frase Flexiva ‘Inflectional Phrase’). Capistrán simply
assumes that IP exists in P’urhépecha. I will do so as well, for the following reason. In Zyman (MS, 2011),
I provided preliminary evidence (see section III.B of that work, “Subject-verb order,” specifically pp. 4256) that, in pragmatically neutral contexts, the argument of an unergative verb in P’urhépecha is preverbal
(presumably in the clausal subject position), whereas that of an unaccusative verb can be preverbal or
postverbal.
I suggested that this could be because P’urhépecha bears out the U(naccusative) H(ypothesis) as developed by Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995). This account involves the following claims. The argument of
an unergative verb is a subject throughout the derivation. That of an unaccusative verb, though, is basegenerated in direct-object position, but because unaccusative verbs cannot assign accusative case, the argument must move to subject position to receive Case.
Because the reflex of this movement is not always visible in P’urhépecha, I suggested that the UHbased account of the word-order facts could be implemented using Move F (feature movement (Chomsky
19
(17)0 ??‘[There were many things at the festival; there was bread, beans, and chili. And
??‘[the kids ate bread and beans,]
??‘ka kʼawásïni jwánu arháspti.26
??‘ka
kʼawásï -ni
jwánu a
≠rhá27 -s
-p
-ti.
??‘and chile
-ACC John
ingest ≠FT
-PFV -PST -IND+3
...........eat..........
??‘and the chili JOHN ate.’
(Capistrán 2002:363, (3))
3. SpecTopExtP, by contrast, hosts
EXTERNAL TOPICS—topical
constituents that in-
tuitively do not bear a tight syntactic relation to the main body of the clause (p.
354). According to Capistrán, the discourse function of an external topic is
to reintroduce distant topics (mentioned previously in the discourse, in a previous
paragraph or in distantly preceding sentences) or to indicate a change of topic or a
new topic. (p. 385, citing other scholars; translation mine)28
External topics (boldfaced below) can be resumed by a coreferential pronoun or
demonstrative (underlined) within IP:
1995, cited in Baker 2002:326)) by positing the following. The unaccusative argument must check a
[+NOM] feature against a suitable head in the “inflectional layer” of the clause (see Rizzi 1997:281). The
argument can be inserted into the derivation with its [+NOM] feature either strong or weak. In the strong
case, when the feature moves to the appropriate specifier, it pied-pipes the argument, producing SV order.
In the weak case, it does not pied-pipe the argument, yielding the base-generated VS order (Zyman, MS,
2011:53,62).
This particular implementation requires that a head like I (or T, as I called it in that paper) exist. However, I recognize that Capistrán’s and my assumption that an I/T head exists in P’urhépecha is hardly innocuous, and that at some point it should be tested, particularly by investigating ellipsis in the language.
Readers who do not wish to assume that I exists in P’urhépecha can simply substitute [S NP VP] for [IP NP
[I I VP]]; this will not affect the argumentation in this paper at all.
26
I have not standardized the various P’urhépecha orthographies and transcriptions used in my sources. For
a brief discussion of efforts to create a standard P’urhépecha orthography, see Zyman (MS, 2011:22, fn.
35).
27
I follow Capistrán Garza (2008:63, fn. 8) in using the symbol “≠” to mark a “formative” or a locative
suffix that must be added to a particular root before other suffixes (such as inflectional suffixes) can be
added. Such roots are called dependent stems (Nava & Maldonado 2004:465-466) or dependent roots
(Capistrán Garza 2008:63, fn. 8).
28
For more discussion of the discourse function of external topics, see Capistrán (2002:386).
20
(18)0 ??‘ka imá acháati, imá segírini mórhintʼani.
(Capistrán 2002:387, (36))
(18)0 ??‘ka imá acháati, imá
segí
≠ri -ni
??‘and that man
that/he continue ≠FT -NONFIN29
(18)0 ??‘mó+rhi
-ntʼa -ni.
??‘cross.river/sea -ITER -NONFIN
(18)0 ??‘And that man, he kept crossing the lake.’
4. or not:
(19)0
0
(m)00
??‘ chá acháatiicha enkatsʼï waxákatini jaká, tʼú niwáka.
??‘chá
??‘you(PL)
acháati
man
-icha
-PL
enka
that
=tsʼï
=SUBJ.2.PL
waxá
sit
≠ka
≠FT
-tini30
-PRF.PART.ACT
(m)00 ??‘ja -∅
-∅ -ká, tʼú
ni -wá -ka
??‘be -PFV -PRS -SJV you(SG) go -FUT -IND+2
(m)00 ??‘You men who are sitting here, you(SG) will go.’ (Capistrán 2002:388, (38))
Capistrán provides (19) as prime evidence that external topics can be syntactically
“unrelated” to the main body of the clause. Indeed, it certainly seems plausible that the
boldfaced phrase in (19) is an external topic. It is at least possible, though, that this
phrase is a direct address, and that direct addresses are in some way different from topics.31 However, Capistrán provides more convincing evidence that external topics can be
29
This morpheme is often glossed as INF(initive), and verb forms in -ni can certainly act like infinitives in
better-studied languages. However, I will follow Capistrán Garza (2008) in glossing it as NONFIN(ite), because in some contexts it seems to act like a different nonfinite form, namely a participle:
(ii)0
‘…wíčuni ínkirini ka¢árini xápka.
‘…wíču -ni
ínki =ri+ni
‘…dog
-ACC that =SUBJ.SG/OBJ.1.SG
‘…the dog that was biting me.’
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:129, (493b))
ka¢ári -ni
xá -p
-ka.
bite
-NONFIN be -PST -SJV
In (18), segírini ‘continued’ (lit. ‘to continue’) is a so-called NARRATIVAL INFINITIVE, a special use of the
infinitive in lieu of a finite form (see Wares 1974:94 for details).
30
Assuming that Foster (1969:82, §631) and Wares (1974:95) are right that -tini forms perfect active participles, waxákatini jaká literally means ‘are [having sat down]’, so the relative clause in (19) would more
literally be translated as ‘have sat down’.
31
On this interpretation, the English translation of (19) strikes me as ungrammatical, because it involves
directly addressing a group of people and then, in the main clause to which the direct address is adjoined,
21
syntactically unrelated to the main body of the clause—i.e., not linked to a gap—in the
form of clauses containing both an external and an internal topic. This evidence, to
which we now turn, will strongly suggest that the two types of topics are different not
only discourse-functionally but also in terms of their structural position.
II.A.2. Are internal and external topics distinct not only discourse-functionally but also
structurally?
Consider the following example. (Putative external topics are boldfaced and putative
internal topics are underlined.)
(20)0 a. [Here in the village they have many bulls and cows.]
(o)00 a. bákaichani tsʼánki káajka wápʼa sapíichani,
(o)00 a. báka -icha -ni
-∅ -ka
tsʼá =nki ká
-a
-j
cow
-PL
-ACC those =that have -OBJ.PL -HAB -PRS -SJV
(o)00 a. wápʼa sapí -icha -ni,
child
small -PL
-ACC
(o)00
‘The cows that have small young,’
(o)00 b. tsʼániksï amámpaichani itsúkwa pʼikúasïnti
(o)00 b. tsʼá -ni
=ksï
amá
-mpa
-icha -ni
itsú -kwa
those -ACC =SUBJ.3.PL mother -3.POSS -PL
-ACC suck -NMLZR
........milk........
(o)00 b. pʼikú -a
-sïn -∅ -ti
rip.out -OBJ.PL -HAB -PRS -IND+3
(o)00
‘those mothers they rip milk out of [= they milk]’
using you to refer to only one of them. This forces an interpretation in which the set of people addressed by
the speaker changes midsentence. (*Youi are taller than youk is similarly bad, but, as pointed out to me by
Edwin Williams (class, April 21, 2011), examples involving coordinate structures such as Youi and youk
and youm, come here are fine.) However, P’urhépecha could conceivably work differently, so the directaddress interpretation of (19) cannot at this point be definitively ruled out.
22
(o)00 c. ka besérru sapíichani, tsʼániksï, támu tʼiréraasïnti…
(o)00 c. ka besérru sapí -icha -ni, tsʼá -ni
=ksï,
támu
and calf
little -PL
-ACC those -ACC =SUBJ.3.PL separately
(o)00 c. tʼiré -ra
-a
-sïn -∅ -ti…
eat -CAUS -OBJ.PL -HAB -PRS -IND+3
(o)00
‘and the little calves, them, they separately feed…’ (Capistrán 2002:389, (39))
For convenience, I will repeat (as (21)) the meaning of the entire text in (20). As above,
putative external topics are boldfaced; putative internal topics, underlined.
(21)0 ??‘Here in the village they have many bulls and cows. [The cows that have
??‘small young, those mothers they rip milk out of (= they milk)], and [the
??‘little calves, them, they separately feed]…
My analysis of (20-21) is as follows. The second sentence is a coordination of two
clauses (each of which is bracketed in (21)). Each of these two conjuncts begins with a
boldfaced phrase. The two boldfaced phrases are contrastive topics. Each of these contrastive topics is followed by a lower-level topic (underlined) whose discourse function
is to “link”32 the higher-level, boldfaced topic to the predication relevant to it.
(20-21) bear out two of Capistrán’s claims. First, a clause can begin with two topics
in a row (which must therefore occupy different syntactic positions). Secondly, in this
case, the linearly second topic (just like Capistrán’s internal topics) is linked to a gap
within IP, whereas the linearly first topic (just like her external topics) is not.33
32
I am alluding here to the conception of topic as “link”: “an address in the hearer’s knowledge-store under
which s/he is instructed to enter […] information” (Vallduví 1990).
33
It could conceivably be that it is the linearly first and not the linearly second topic that is related to the
gap within IP, although, intuitively, the opposite hypothesis is clearly more natural. In this connection, it
may be worth pointing out that (at least in English) “reconstructing” the second topic to the gap position
produces a grammatical utterance, whereas this is not true of the first topic:
(iii)
a. *[The cows that have small young]i, they milk [those mothers]i.
xxx(ii) b. *[Those mothers]i, they milk [the cows that have small young]i.
23
Now, as we have mentioned, the boldfaced topics in (20-21) set up a “high-level”
contrast, and each underlined topic helps elaborate on the boldfaced topic that preceded
it. This is consistent with Capistrán’s claims about the discourse function of external topics (see section II.A.1); in particular, besérru sapíichani ‘the little calves’ certainly introduces a new topic. I therefore conclude that (20-21) provide solid evidence for Capistrán’s claim that external and internal topics have different discourse functions and occupy distinct syntactic positions (although more examples would certainly be welcome).
II.A.3. How do pragmatically marked phrases on the left periphery get there?
Capistrán assumes that phrases in SpecFocP and SpecCP moved there from within
IP (p. 353), but that those in SpecTopExtP are base-generated there (p. 354). (This latter
assumption is particularly reasonable, since, as we have seen, external topics are often
not syntactically integrated into the main body of the clause.)
II.B. Discussion
In this section, I will briefly discuss four questions that arise in connection with the
structure proposed by Capistrán (2002), which, for convenience’ sake, is reproduced here
once again:
(iv)
a. *…[the little calves]j, they separately feed [them]j.
xxx(ii) b. *…[them]j, they separately feed [the little calves]j.
24
(22)0
??‘
II.B.1. What drives the movement of pragmatically marked phrases to the left periphery?
Let us accept Capistrán’s assumption (see section II.A.3 above) that left-peripheral
foci and internal topics got where they are by movement, rather than being basegenerated there but coreferential with gaps in the canonical argument positions, whereas
external topics are base-generated in situ.34 Now, Capistrán does not make reference to
features. However, if we hold the aforementioned desideratum that all movement be motivated, it becomes natural to posit that internal topicalization and left-peripheral focus
movement are driven by the need for a pragmatically marked phrase to check a
[+T(opic)] or [+F(ocus)] feature in a local configuration. I have therefore represented the
left-peripheral focus (XP) and internal topic (YP) in (22) as checking a [+F] and a [+T]
feature against the Foc° and C° heads, respectively, in Spec–head configurations. Because we can confidently state that external topics appear in their base-generated posi-
34
Of course, these claims of movement should be tested in the future by applying movement diagnostics.
25
tion, I have not represented ZP in (22) as checking or even bearing any relevant feature
at all: no movement, no need to posit a feature to drive it.
II.B.2. Why does the tree in (22) look so much more complicated than the one in Capistrán (2002:354)?
Capistrán’s diagram looks much simpler than (22) because she does not show the
heads I have labeled Foc°, C°, or TopExt° (cf. fn. 10). However, it is very probable that
P’urhépecha does have at least one C head, because it has overt complementizers (see
section III.B.3).
As for Foc° and TopExt°: as discussed above, Capistrán assumes that pragmatically
marked phrases on the left periphery are located in specifiers. Assuming that every specifier must be the specifier of some head, this inevitably leads us to posit Foc° and
TopExt° heads. TopExt° would then be silent, as would C° in at least matrix indicative
clauses (as in English). On the pronunciation of Foc°, see the very next subsection.
On the question of whether it always must be the case crosslinguistically that phrasal
movement targets specifiers and not heads, Prof. Robert Freidin has indicated to me
(p.c.) that this seems like more of a restrictive assumption than anything. If this assumption is eventually found to be unwarranted, or indeed falsified, then the structure in (22)
may be able to be simplified considerably, with some left-peripheral phrases appearing in
or moving to heads rather than specifiers (and consequently no need to project the corresponding specifiers).
II.B.3. The position of the contrastive-focus clitic =sï
Capistrán does not explicitly address the question of where the clitic =sï is located.
In (22) I have placed it in SpecFocP along with the focused phrase. However, given that
26
Capistrán assumes that focused phrases are in the specifier of FocP, and given that the
clitic always follows the focused phrase, I think it makes sense to hypothesize that =sï is
the overt lexical realization of the head Foc°, just like wè in the Gbe family of West Africa (Aboh 2003, ch. 7, cited in Vicente 2004a, 2004b; Aboh (1995), cited in Rizzi
(1997:287)).
II.B.4. What happens when there is nothing to fill one of the pragmatically marked positions on the left periphery?
Rizzi (1997:310ff.) discusses the following “antiadjacency effect” related to the
that-trace effect:
(23)0 a. ??*an amendment whichi they say that _i will be law next year
b. ??*an amendment whichi they say that, next year, _i will be law
(24)0 a. ??*[Which doctor]i did you tell me that _i had had a heart attack during an
??*[operation?
b. ??*[Which doctor]i did you tell me that, during an operation, _i had had a
??*[heart attack?
Rizzi analyzes these examples (p. 311, citing Bresnan 1977:194) in the context of his
proposal for the structure of the clausal left periphery. On this hypothesis, what was previously thought of as C (and its X-bar–theoretic projection) is actually five different
heads, each with an X-bar–theoretic projection of its own:
(25)0 ??*[ForceP … [TopP … [FocP … [TopP … [FinP … ]]]]]35
(Rizzi 1997:297, (41))
A full summary of Rizzi’s account of (23-24) would lead us too far astray. What is important for our purposes is that his proposal crucially relies on the following hypothesis.
In English, the heads of ForceP and Fin(iteness)P are normally realized syncretically on
one head. However, if an element is topicalized (which is his claim for the preposed adverbials in (23b) and (24b)), syncretism is impossible, because the topicalized element
35
Rizzi provides evidence (p. 295, (37)) that both Top heads can iterate.
27
must appear in one of the two topic positions, and so it compels Force° and Fin° to be
realized separately. But how can we ensure that the syncretic realization of these heads is
the default case? Rizzi adopts the following principle:
(26)0 ??*Avoid structure.
In this spirit, I would argue that if in a particular utterance there is no need for a particular discourse-functional projection—for instance, if the utterance lacks an internal or
external topic or a contrastive focus—then the null hypothesis is that that projection is
not incorporated into the tree. The alternative hypothesis—that an utterance can contain
syntactic structure that has no effect on syntax, phonetic form, or semantic interpretation—would seem to multiply entities needlessly, i.e., without a gain in explanatory
power (a violation of Occam’s razor).36
III. P’urhépecha phrase structure in pragmatically neutral contexts
In order to test Capistrán’s (2002) proposal, we will, as mentioned above, examine
how information structure interacts with syntax in ten P’urhépecha texts. However, we
will not be able to assess the impact of information structure on syntax in this language if
we do not know what P’urhépecha syntax looks like “in the first place”—i.e., in a pragmatically neutral context. We can determine this by analyzing utterances in which every
part has the same pragmatic value—for instance, “old information” or “new information.”
36
It may eventually be discovered that one or more discourse-functional projections are present even in
some utterances lacking these projections’ information-structural signature (for instance, an overt leftperipheral topic), but such a claim would of course require substantiation.
28
The overview of basic P’urhépecha syntax provided here is, by necessity, not even
remotely complete.37 I have chosen to focus on head-complement ordering within various types of phrases. This is particularly important for us because we will be testing Capistrán’s claim that SVO is basic (p. 376) and SOV pragmatically marks the object in any
of a number of ways (pp. 370-374). A familiarity with P’urhépecha head-complement
ordering, combined with the fact that P’urhépecha is a subject-initial language38 (Capistrán 2002:394; see also Chamoreau 2007:134), should suffice for us to be able to detect
information-structurally driven deviations from pragmatically neutral syntax.
III.A. Sources of data
For this purpose, I have relied primarily on two sources of data.
The first of these is Chamoreau (2003:55-143). This book chapter is a systematic investigation of aspects of P’urhépecha syntax that seems to have been obtained purely by
elicitation. This is exactly what we want: a sentence elicited with no prior context is
much likelier to conform to pragmatically neutral syntax than one culled from the middle
of a spoken or written discourse, in which there is likely to be at least some old information. I have excluded from consideration question–answer pairs in this source, since answers to questions are rarely pragmatically neutral (cf. the informational foci in (6), (910)).
That the data in this source probably present an accurate picture of pragmatically
neutral syntax is suggested by the seemingly identical structures within paradigms in
which only one element varies from one sentence to the next. For instance, Chamoreau’s
37
Indeed, compiling this information was a humbling experience, as it made it clear just how much we still
do not know. For every question this section begins to answer, it raises several more.
38
At least in the Lake Pátzcuaro (Eastern) dialect area.
29
(60a-f) (p. 72) mean ‘I have a dog’, ‘you have a dog’, and so on. If considerations of new
and old information had affected the data, we might expect to see independent pronouns39 (except perhaps in the first sentence) and some sort of indication that they were
being contrastively focused. However, the only person marking in these sentences is in
the verbal inflection and in enclitics.
The second source is data I elicited for Zyman (MS, 2011). In this study, two native
speakers contacted over the Internet were given short Spanish dialogues consisting of a
question and an answer and asked to translate them into P’urhépecha. The question (almost always ‘What happened?’) was designed to be general enough to induce pragmatically neutral syntax in the answer (since every constituent in the answer would be new
information and would thus have the same informational status as every other constituent) (Zyman, MS, 2011:43). Speakers were explicitly asked to disregard the word order
in the Spanish prompts and to translate the answers in a way that sounded natural in
P’urhépecha in context—i.e., in response to the question given. Further discussion of the
method, including possible problems, may be found on pp. 54-56 of the aforementioned
manuscript.
III.B. The data
III.B.1. Negation
At present I do not know whether negation in P’urhépecha is a head or an adverbial
adjunct. If the latter, then this subsection strictly speaking does not belong in an overview of head-complement order. At any rate, negation always seems to precede its associated phrase, yielding the linear order [Neg XP]:
39
This is not just speculation: independent pronouns do exist in P’urhépecha (Wares 1974:98).
30
(27)0 ??‘nó xa¢íšinkani wíčuni.
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:73, (63))
??‘nó xa¢í -šin -∅ -ka
=ni
wíču -ni.
??‘NEG have -HAB -PRS -IND+1 =SUBJ.1.SG dog -ACC
??‘I don’t have a dog.’
(28)0 ??‘í kumánčikwa nó khériišti.
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:59, (1))
w
h
-∅ -ti.
??‘í
kumánčik a nó k éri -i
-š
??‘DEM house
NEG big
-COP -PFV -PRS -IND+3
??‘This house is not big.’
(29)0 ??‘xwánu nó máestruišti.
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:80, (120))
-∅
??‘xwánu nó máestru -i
-š
-ti.
??‘John
NEG teacher
-COP -PFV -PRS -IND+3
??‘John is not a teacher.’
III.B.2. Quantifiers
As with negation, I cannot at this point state whether, in a quantified noun phrase
(Q-NP), the head is the quantifier or the noun. However, the quantifier always seems to
precede its associated NP, producing the linear order [Q NP]:
(30)0 ??‘uáni kuanásïcha/chʼkurhicha
??‘uáni kuanásï -cha / chʼkurhi -cha
??‘many frog
-PL
-PL
/ leaf
??‘many frogs/leaves’
(31)0 ??‘wánikwa anímaliičani
??‘wáni -kwa
anímali -iča
??‘many -NMLZR animal -PL
??‘many animals’
(32)0 ??‘kánikwa i¢í
??‘káni
-kwa
??‘gather?/multiply? -NMLZR
??‘too much water’
(elicited from Speaker 2)
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:99, (231))
-ni
-ACC
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:104, (271))
i¢í
water
(33)0 ??‘máru šipápiriiča
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:44)
??‘máru šipá -pi -ri
-iča
??‘some steal -? -PRS.PART.ACT -PL
??‘some thieves’
31
(34)0 ??‘iámentu pʼurhépecheechani [orthography]40
??‘yámentu phuɽépeče -eča -ni
??‘all
P’urhépecha -PL
-ACC
??‘all the P’urhépecha (people)’
(adapted from Nava 2004:138 [Uárhi 1998])
I have found one example in which the quantifier follows its associated NP:
(35)0 ??‘ambe iamindu kʼarhistia
-∅
??‘ampé yámintu kʼarhí -s
-ti
=ya
??‘thing all
dry.up -PFV -PRS -IND+3 =already
??‘everything has dried up already’
(adapted from Villavicencio Zarza 2006:439 [Rincón Romero 1990])
However, this example comes from the middle of a text, so there is no guarantee of
pragmatic neutrality. Furthermore, an expression meaning ‘everything’ could potentially
turn out to behave differently than normal Q-NPs. I leave this as an open question.
III.B.3. Complementizers
As shown in (36-41) below, it appears that a complementizer in P’urhépecha always
precedes its associated embedded clause, yielding the structure [C IP] (or [C S]; see fn.
25).
C can control features of this clause. For instance, Wares (1974:99) indicates that
himbóka ‘because’ and éska ‘that’ cooccur with the “strong” forms of the subjunctive
(featuring full aspectual and temporal marking), whereas éka ‘when, if’ cooccurs with
the “weak” forms, in which the aspectual and temporal marking is reduced.41 This looks
like a case of c-selection. Assuming that a head selects for properties of its complement
and not the other way around, we can conclude that C is the head and IP the complement,
and hence the structure is [CP C IP].
40
I have written [orthography] on the first line of examples in which, following my sources, I have used
(a) P’urhépecha orthography on the first line and a phonemic transcription on the second.
41
Wares (1974:99) also notes that the weak forms of the subjunctive cooccur with éŋga ‘who, which’,
which is presumably a relative pronoun. I leave it for further research to determine what is responsible for
this cooccurrence, which will involve ascertaining what complementizers éŋga cooccurs with.
32
(36)0 ??‘éki imá piakwaṛeaka
??‘é
-ki
i
-má
??‘REL -REL DEM -one
??‘if he buys one’
pi
buy
(adapted from Foster 1969:180, §913.2)
-a
-kwaṛe -a
-ka
-PRELOC?42
-REFL
-FUT -SJV
(37)0 ??‘iki xí kawíhkani
(adapted from Capistrán Garza 2004:86, (133))
-∅ -ka =ni
??‘i
-ki
xí kawí
-h
??‘REL -REL I get.drunk -HAB -PRS -SJV =SUBJ.1.SG
??‘if/when I get drunk’
(38)0 ??‘ínkini išéaka
??‘ínki =ni
išé -a
??‘if
=SUBJ.1.SG see -FUT
??‘if I see him’
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:139, (560))
-ka
-SJV
??‘nákhiru phaménčati xápka
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:109, (317))
(39)0
(Z)00 ??‘nákhiru phamé
-nča
??‘although be.sick/in.pain -LOCREPL
-ti
-PRS.PART.ACT
(Z)00 ??‘xá -∅
-p
-ka
??‘be -PFV -PST -SJV
(Z)00 ??‘although he was sick’
(40)0 ??‘xwánu kwhíati apénašï thú nyáraaka.
??‘xwánu kwhí -a
-ti
apénašï thú nyá
-ra
-a
-ka
??‘John
sleep -FUT -IND+3 as.soon.as you arrive -MID? -FUT -SJV
??‘John’s going to sleep as soon as you arrive.’
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:140, (571))
(41)0 ??‘ke ísi nyánthaka xima
??‘ke ísi
nyá
-ntha
??‘C thus arrive -CENTRIF
??‘when they arrive there’
(adapted from Chamoreau 2004:128, (83))
-ka
xima
-SJV there
III.B.4. Adpositions
P’urhépecha adpositions can either precede or follow their associated NPs, and this
appears to be lexically determined.
42
A PRE-LOCATIVE STEM EXPANSION in P’urhépecha is a suffix immediately following a stem that together
with it creates a root, and that is not necessarily eliminated when a locative suffix is added (Foster
1969:106, §740).
33
Capistrán Garza (2004:65, fn. 15) notes that the comitative postposition xinkóni
‘with’ and the highly polysemous postposition ximpó can overtly assign accusative case
to their associated NPs (as shown in (42-43)). Assuming that a head assigns Case to its
complement and not vice versa, this is evidence that the head of a phrase [NP P] or [P
NP] is the adposition, and so the structure is [PP NP P] or [PP P NP].
(42)0 ??‘imáni xinkóni
??‘imá
-ni
??‘that/him -ACC
??‘with him’
(43)0
(adapted from Capistrán Garza 2004:65, (7))
xinkóni
with
??‘Ini juchari uantakua jimpo… [orthography]
??‘í
-ni
hučáari wantá -kwa
jimpo…
??‘DEM -ACC our
speak -NMLZR in
??‘in this our language’
(adapted from Nava 2004:139 [Uárhi 1998])
Another important postposition is anápu ‘from’, which indicates source or origin:
(44)0 ??‘tiɽímakwa anápu
??‘wellN
from
??‘from this well’
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:132, (518))
For examples of perfect active participles used as postpositions, see Wares (1974:95).
The following examples show some of the prepositions of P’urhépecha:
(45)0 ??‘oɽépani inténi kumánčikwaɽu
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:70, (50))
??‘oɽé
-pa
-ni
inté -ni
kumánčikwa -ɽu
??‘before? -CENTRIF? -NONFIN? DEM -ACC house
-LOC
??‘in front of that house’
(46)0 ??‘tá¢ipani ktháɽu
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:71, (53))
h
??‘tá¢i -pa
-ni
kt á
-ɽu
??‘after -CENTRIF? -NONFIN? house -LOC
??‘behind the house’
(47)0 ??‘wiɽípantani čpíriɽu
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:71, (58))
??‘wiɽíp
-anta -ni
čpíri -ɽu
??‘circle/round -?
-NONFIN? fire -LOC
??‘around the fire’
34
(48)0 ??‘kécekwa wašáncikwaɽu
(adapted from Foster 1969:184, §932.2)
??‘ké
-ce
-kwa
wašá -nci
-kwa
-ɽu
??‘go.down -down -NMLZR sit
-LOC(top of head) -NMLZR -LOC
??‘under the chair’
In (45-48), the NP associated with the preposition bears the suffix -ɽu, which marks locative case (or, as Chamoreau 2003:23 calls it, directional). The analysis of these examples
is not completely clear. The locative-marked NP could be the object of the adposition, in
which case these would be true prepositions. Alternatively, it is at least conceivable that
the adposition and the locative NP are both adjuncts, with neither being the complement
of the other. In this case, (47-48), for instance, would literally mean ‘around, at the fire’
and ‘underneath, at the chair’, and the adpositions would be intransitive. This question
could be solved by eliciting data to determine whether locative case marking is obligatory with these adpositions. If it is, then we presumably have a selection relation and can
conclude that these NPs are in fact the complements of the adpositions, which would
then be prepositions. I will not pursue the matter here, however.
Those cases aside, P’urhépecha does seem to have at least some clear prepositions.
The adpositions in the following examples are borrowed from Spanish, which is a prepositional rather than a postpositional language:
(49)0 ??‘…pára amámpa.
??‘…pára amá
-mpa.
??‘…for
mother -POSSREL.3
??‘…for her mother.’
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:94, (193))
35
(50)0 ??‘xwánu xa¢íšti má šintári kómo xónkuɽikwa.
(Q)00 ??‘xwánu xa¢í -š
-∅ -ti
má šintári
??‘John
have -PFV -PRS -IND+3 a
rope
(Q)00 ??‘kómo xó -n -kuɽi -kwa.
??‘as
tieV -? -REFL -NMLZR
(Q)00 ??‘John uses a rope as a belt.’
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:121, (423))
(51)0 ??‘xwánu nyarášti ásta xučínio. (adapted from Chamoreau 2003:127, (471))
-∅ -ti
??‘xwánu nya
-rá
-š
ásta xučíni -o
??‘John
arrive -MID? -PFV -PRS -IND+3 until POSS.1 -RES
??‘John got as far as my house.’
(52)0 ??‘…por kwetsápikwa.
??‘…por
kwetsápikwa.
??‘…because.of weight
??‘…because of its weight.’
(53)0
??‘imá sántaru yóthaɽašti ké xí.
(adapted from Chamoreau 2007:144, note 7)
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:134, (528))
(T)00 ??‘imá
sáni
=taru
??‘that/he little/few =more
..........more..........
(T)00 ??‘yó
-∅ -ti
-tha
-ɽa
-š
ké
xí.
43
??‘be.long -LOC(leg) -REINF
-PFV -PRS -IND+3 than I
(T)00 ??‘He’s taller than me.’
III.B.5. Determiners
In this section I will restrict myself to the determiners traditionally called articles,
because in some languages (e.g., Ancient Greek), other determinerlike elements, such as
demonstratives, turn out to have different distributions and thus to occupy a different position within the extended projection of N.
43
The REINFORCING SUFFIX emphasizes or “reinforces” the action of the subject on itself as opposed to
someone or something else (Foster 1969:119, §762).
36
P’urhépecha has an indefinite determiner ma ‘a’, which seems to have been grammaticalized from the numeral ma ‘one’, but no overt definite determiner. Ma can precede or follow its associated NP, yielding the structure [D NP] (as in (54)) or [NP D] (as
in (55)). Are these phrases NPs or DPs? According to Vázquez-Rojas Maldonado (2011),
the latter; I will not take a stance on this issue here, and will continue to use NP in discussions of P’urhépecha as shorthand for ‘NP or DP (if the latter exists)’.44
(54)0 ??‘Ma joskua uérastia.
-∅ -ti
??‘Ma jos -kua
ué
-ra
-s
=ya.
??‘a
?
-NMLZR go.out -MID -PFV -PRS -IND+3 =already
........star.......
??‘A star appeared [lit. ‘came out’].’
(elicited from Speaker 2; dialect area: Lake Pátzcuaro [Eastern region])
(55)0 ??‘Joskwa ma xarharajti.
-∅ -ti.
??‘Jos -kwa
ma xarha -ra
-j
??‘?
-NMLZR a
appear -MID -PFV -PRS -IND+3
??‘.........star.......
??‘A star appeared.’
(elicited from Speaker 1;
dialect area: la Cañada de los Once Pueblos [the Gully of the Eleven Towns])
As indicated above, these examples were produced by speakers from different dialect areas. The ordering of D and NP could potentially be subject to dialectal variation.
III.B.6. Verbs and their nonfinite complements
The last type of phrase we will examine in this overview of P’urhépecha headcomplement order is the VP. I will not be considering here VPs consisting of a V and its
direct object; that discussion will be postponed until section IV.A, “(S)OV.” Instead, we
will concentrate on VPs consisting of a V and an infinitival or participial (lower) VP.45 I
44
Of course, even if DPs do exist in P’urhépecha, it does not follow from that that NPs cannot appear without a D.
45
These infinitival and participial phrases may be larger than VP. If so, then the c-selectional connection
between the highest verb and the nonfinite morphology is not direct, but rather mediated through interme-
37
assume that the infinitival or participial morphology is c-selected by the verb. If this is
so, then the higher VP is headed by the verb, which takes the lower VP as its complement.
In cases where the putative head V is lexical, this analysis also makes sense semantically. For instance, in (61), ‘wanting to leave’ is a type of wanting, not a type of leaving: you can want to leave and not leave, but you can’t want to leave and not want anything.
The ordering generalization seems to be as follows.
1. Head Vs with certain auxiliarylike meanings tend to follow their complements:
[VPcomplement V]. The first of these verbs is ja-rhá-ni46 ‘be’, as in (58). The second
is a verb derived from it, jámani, which is standardly translated into Spanish as
andar: ‘go’ in the sense of ‘to go (along) doing something’. This literal meaning
seems to work well for the occurrence of jámani in (59), but the verb may be on
its way to being grammaticalized as another progressive auxiliary (cf. (60)).
2. Other verbs tend to precede their infinitival or participial complements: [VP V
VPcomplement]. Some of these are high-content, such as ‘want’; ‘be able’; ‘go’ in
the sense of ‘to go do something’; and the aspectual verb ‘begin’. To the extent
that P’urhépecha can use ‘go’ as in the English I’m going to visit her or its Spanish equivalent La voy a visitar, this verb seems to precede its complement too,
even though its meaning might also intuitively be described as “auxiliarylike.”
diate abstract functional heads. To my knowledge, however, no evidence for this more complicated structure currently exists.
46
-ni here is the infinitival or nonfinite suffix; -rha is a formative that appears in only some of the forms of
this verb.
38
There is therefore not a perfect correlation between a verb’s “high-content” (lexical) or “auxiliarylike” status (an informal lexical-semantic characterization) and
its ordering with respect to its nonfinite complement.
However, given that this ordering seems to be determined by the head verb, it may
eventually be discovered that verbs in the structure [VPcomplement V] are actually in a different position (say, I), whether they were base-generated there:
(56)0
??‘
or moved there from within the highest VP:
(57)0
??‘
If either of these is the case, then we will be able to say that VP is always head-initial,
whereas IP is always head-final. For that conclusion to be convincing, however, we will
need independent evidence that 1) the I node exists in P’urhépecha, and 2) the head verbs
appearing in the order [VPcomplement V] really are occupying it.
Alternatively, perhaps the two different orders could be explained by informationstructural considerations. It tends to be the case in P’urhépecha that focused elements
appear early in the linear string, whereas backgrounded elements are postverbal (Chamoreau 2007:135). This could potentially account for why high-content head verbs tend to
39
precede their nonfinite complements, whereas the trend is reversed when the higher verb
is low-content and “auxiliarylike.” (We would, however, want an explanation for why
the ‘go’ of I’m going to do something tends to appear preverbally, unlike the two other
“auxiliarylike” verbs.)
The following are a few examples of “auxiliarylike” verbs following their nonfinite
complements:
(58)0 ??‘imánki wašákatini xáka47
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:85, (154))
??‘imá =nki wašá ≠ka
-tini
xá -ka
??‘DEM =REL sit
≠STAT -PRF.PART.ACT be -SJV
??‘the one who is sitting down’
(59)0 ??‘…ximpoka kaɽani xamaka.
(adapted from Chamoreau 2005:78, (17))
??‘…ximpo
-ka
kaɽa -ni
xa -ma -ka.
??‘…POSTPOS -REL? go.up -NONFIN be -ADV -SJV
??‘.........because........
......go......
??‘…because I was/went going up(hill).’48
(60)0 ??‘isïksï uantani jamani [orthography]
??‘í
=si
=ksi
wantá -ni
já -ma -ni
??‘DEM =EMPH =SUBJ.3.PL talk
-NONFIN be -ADV -NONFIN
??‘for them to be talking like this’
(adapted from Nava L. 2004:168 [Uárhi 2002])
Another example is (ii), in fn. 29.
The following examples show “high-content” or lexical verbs preceding their nonfinite complements:
(61)0 ??‘ínki wékaka niránikši
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:141, (574))
-∅
-∅ -ka ni -rá -ni
??‘ínki wé
-ka
=kši
??‘if
want -STAT -PFV -PRS -SJV go -FT -NONFIN =SUBJ.3.PL
??‘if they want to leave’
47
See fn. 30 on the precise temporal/aspectual meaning of this analytic verb form.
In this examination of P’urhépecha VPs consisting of a V and its nonfinite VP complement, I did not
control for whether the higher verb was finite or not, or for whether the structure appeared in a main or in
an embedded clause. Clearly, there is room for further research here.
48
40
(62)0 ??‘nó úšinkani šanárani xantyákhu.
(γ)00 ??‘nó ú49
-šin -∅ -ka
=ni
šanára -ni
??‘not be.able -HAB -PRS -IND+1 =SUBJ.1.SG walk
-NONFIN
(γ)00 ??‘xantyá =khu.
??‘alone
=only
??‘........alone........
(γ)00 ??‘I can’t walk alone.’
(63)0 ??‘[On the fourteenth, there’s always a big fiesta,]
??‘[pára niráni kʼwínčeni tatá krítʼueri ximpó.
(ζ)00 ??‘[pára ni -rá -ni
kʼwí -nče
-ni
tatá
??‘[for
go -FT -NONFIN ?
-LOCREPL -NONFIN Lord
celebrate.a.festival
(ζ)00 ??‘[krítʼu -eri xi
-mpe
-o
??‘[Christ -GEN DEM -2ST(DEM) -RES50
........concerning.......
(γ)00 ??‘lit. ‘in order to go celebrate a fiesta concerning Lord Christ.’
??‘id. ‘…in honor of Christ the Lord.’
(64)0 ??‘yáši wénašinkani xúkskani. (adapted from Chamoreau 2003:106, (291))
-na -šin -∅
??‘yáši wé
-ka
=ni
xúkska -ni
??‘today begin -? -HAB -PRS -IND+1 =SUBJ.1.SG sow
-NONFIN
??‘Today I begin to sow.’
And here we see the ‘go’ of ‘I’m going to…’ preceding its nonfinite complement as
well:
49
This root also means ‘make’ and ‘do’.
The case marker -o is sometimes called RESIDENTIAL because it can denote somebody’s place of residence, but Foster (1969:76, §526) calls it the PLACE CASE and indicates that its meaning is actually
broader: ‘place of’.
50
41
(65)0 ??‘xwánu níati khékurani kumánčikwa.
(δ)00 ??‘xwánu ní -a
-ti
khé
-ku
-ra
-ni
??‘John
go -FUT -IND+3 grow -OBJ.3 -CAUS -NONFIN
(δ)00 ??‘kumánčikwa.
??‘house
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:113, (361))
(γ)00 ??‘John’s going to make the house bigger.’
III.C. Summary
This concludes our exploration of pragmatically neutral syntax in P’urhépecha, and
specifically of the head-complement ordering within various phrases. The results of this
investigation are as follows:
(66)0 Phenomenon
negation
quantified NPs
clauses with complementizers
adpositions
determiners
Head
Neg?
Q?
C
Complement
XP?
NP?
IP
P
NP
D?
verbs appearing with non- V
finite VPs (infinitival or
participial)
Head-complement order
[Neg XP]
[Q NP] (almost always)
[CP C IP]
1) [PP NP P] or
2) [PP P NP]
(lexically determined)
NP?
1) [D NP] or
2) [NP D]
nonfinite VP 1) [VP VP V] with the auxiliarylike verbs jarháni ‘be’
and jámani ‘go (along doing something)’
2) [VP V VP] otherwise
It seems clear that, at least on the basis of the data in (66), we cannot straightforwardly categorize P’urhépecha as a head-initial or a head-final language. This situation is
familiar from languages like German, in which CP is head-initial but VP is standardly
analyzed as head-final. If Neg and Q turn out to be heads in P’urhépecha, then we may
be tempted to consider the language fundamentally head-initial, since we will then have
three head-initial phrases and three that seem to permit either order. However, even in
42
that scenario, the situation would not be so clear. Classical Latin is a preferentially verbfinal language,51 and this might be taken as evidence that it is head-final in general. But,
as in P’urhépecha, its complementizers obligatorily precede their associated clauses ([CP
C IP] or [CP C S]), and its negative elements must precede their associated phrases ([Neg
XP]).
Nevertheless, it is always possible that future elicitation research will be able to control for possible interference from information structure better than the text-based approach used here, and that such investigation will reveal P’urhépecha to be more harmonic with respect to headedness than it currently seems.
IV. Testing the claims of Capistrán (2002)
With the information in (66) and the knowledge that P’urhépecha is fundamentally a
subject-initial language, we now have an idea of what its phrase structure looks like in
pragmatically neutral contexts. We are therefore now able to evaluate Capistran’s (2002)
claims about the interplay between P’urhépecha information structure and syntax.
The overall result of testing Capistrán’s model against the ten texts listed in (15) is
that the data are consistent with the model’s predictions. In other words: for virtually any
sentence or utterance in these texts, it is possible to draw a tree that places its constituents in syntactic positions where, according to the model, they can get the pragmatic values they can be deduced to have by examining the surrounding discourse context.52
51
This has long been known, but evidence for it from corpus analysis is given in Devine & Stephens (2006)
(summarized on their p. 79).
52
I have disregarded clitics in determining the word order of an utterance (so a clause with the word order
[V=CL O] was counted as VO, for instance). This is because at least some P’urhépecha clitics behave differently than phrases bearing stress. Enclitic pronouns can appear either on the verb or on a constituent
preceding it (Chamoreau 2007:128). This means that a discourse context normally favoring VOS order will
not induce it if the only overt element indicating the subject (aside from verbal inflection) is a clitic.
43
The following discussion will focus on the information structure of two word orders
in particular: OV and VS.
IV.A. (S)OV
IV.A.1. Capistrán’s analysis
Capistrán (2002) claims that the unmarked word order is SVO (p. 376),53 and that
SOV is used only under particular circumstances (pp. 370-374). These circumstances are
the following.54
The first case is when [OV] (presumably a VP) refers to an action that is performed
frequently. In this case, O (boldfaced) is a generic noun:55
(67)0 ??‘jimá chpíri ústi ya.
??‘jimá chpíri ú
-s
??‘there fire
make -PFV
??‘There he made the fire.’
-∅
-ti
-PRS -IND+3
(Capistrán 2002:370, (13a))
ya.
already
One particularly interesting minimal pair is the following:
53
She notes on the same page that SVO clauses can be pragmatically neutral, but do not have to be. This is
supported by her claim that an SVO sentence is felicitous in response to either a subject or an object whquestion (p. 381). This means that we can state a general claim of Capistrán’s as follows. If a declarative
clause is non-SVO, then it is pragmatically marked; but the reverse does not hold. This could probably be
implemented by allowing pragmatically marked phrases to be inserted into the derivation with their [+T] or
[+F] features strong or weak. In the former case, the phrase moves to the appropriate discourse-functional
projection overtly; in the latter case, covertly (under some implementation of covert movement, such as
Move F). This is along the lines of the explanation I proposed for VS and SV in pragmatically neutral
P’urhépecha sentences with verbs predicted on semantic grounds to be unaccusative (see fn. 25).
54
This discussion will set aside cases of (S)OV in which O is an internal or external topic or a leftperipheral focus. On Capistrán’s analysis, left-peripheral focused objects should be easy to distinguish
from other focused objects, because the former are obligatorily marked with the clitic =sï and receive a
cleftlike interpretation. See also fn. 76.
55
For discussion of similar phenomena in Latin and other languages, see Devine & Stephens (2006:94ff).
44
(68)0 ??‘itsï atátsʼïkuni
??‘itsï
atá -tsʼï
-ku
-ni
??‘water hit -LOC(top of head) -OBJ.3 -NONFIN
??‘to baptize’
(Capistrán 2002:370)
(69)0 ??‘atátsʼïkuni itsï
??‘atá -tsʼï
-ku
-ni
itsï
??‘hit -LOC(top of head) -OBJ.3 -NONFIN water
??‘to splash the head of _____ with water’
(Capistrán 2002:370)
Another such OV unit is itsúkwa pʼikúasïnti ‘[they] rip milk out of’ = ‘they milk’
(cows) ((20b)).
Capistrán suggests (p. 370) that perhaps some of these OV constituents are so lexicalized that their objects have actually ceased to function as syntactic objects. To my
knowledge, this has not been investigated. But at least some of these OV units must be
lexicalized, such as itsï atátsʼïkuni ‘to baptize’ in (68) above, whose meaning is noncompositional.
It seems plausible that this OV pattern (which I will refer to as
GENERIC
OV) is not
induced by information structure. However, Capistrán claims that all other instances of
SOV in P’urhépecha are, and specifically that they all emphasize the object in some way.
Even more specifically, she claims that if a clause is SOV and does not involve generic
OV, it marks the object as one of the following:56
1. important new information,
2. contrary to expectation,
3. contrastive, or
4. having undergone DETAIL RESTATEMENT (Capistrán 2002:371).
56
Note that, on Capistrán’s analysis, an OV clause with no overt S can have its O in any of the leftperipheral discourse-functional positions.
45
Detail restatement is the act of reintroducing previously mentioned information to make
it more salient (Payne 1990:207).57
IV.A.2. Testing Capistrán’s analysis
When I was about to begin analyzing the ten texts in (15), testing Capistrán’s account of OV in P’urhépecha was my main objective, because I was skeptical of it: I
thought that at least some instances of OV (that did not involve generic OV) would turn
out to be pragmatically neutral. However, her account was phenomenally successful. It
turned out that almost every single instance of OV in the corpus, virtually without exception, could be plausibly analyzed as falling into one of the five categories she proposed.
IV.A.2.a. Generic OV
There were instances of generic OV, including (70) and possibly (71):58
(70)0 ??‘ximá xí tʼirékwa úsïnkani.
(Capistrán Garza 2004:65, (5))
(µ)00 ??‘ximá xí tʼiré
-kwa
??‘there I eat/[feedINTRANS] -NMLZR
(µ)00 ??‘ú
-sïn -∅ -ka
=ni.
??‘make -HAB -PRS -IND+1 =SUBJ.1.SG
(µ)00 ??‘There I make food.’
(71)0 ??‘ampokutaksi xupikati ménteru…
(Chamoreau 2004:128, (81))
??‘ampokuta -ksi
xupi -ka
-ti
méni =teru…
??‘street
=SUBJ.3.PL seize -STAT -IND+3 time59 =more
.........again.........
??‘They seize the street60 again…’
57
Payne uses the term ADDED DETAIL RESTATEMENT.
The generic O is again boldfaced in these examples.
59
As in How many times are you going to repeat that? Hence ‘[one] more time’ = ‘again’.
60
This expression seems similar to the English hit the road, except that the context of its use here suggests
going back out into the street to travel on foot.
58
46
One small piece of evidence that ampokuta xupikani ‘to seize the street’ is an instance
of generic OV is that it occurs elsewhere in the same text, in the same (OV) order:
(72)0 ??‘[On the road play two people, and again {there’s} music; they play the
??‘[piece “El Toro” (“The Bull”),]
??‘[ka ménteruksi ampokuta xupikani…
??‘[ka méni =teru =ksi
ampokuta xupi -ka
-ni…
??‘[and time =more =SUBJ.3.PL street
seize -STAT -NONFIN
??[‘and once again they seize the street…’ (Chamoreau 2004:125, (55-58))
However, in (72), ʃanari ‘street’ has been mentioned recently, so the OV ordering of
ampokuta xupikani could technically be due to detail restatement.
IV.A.2.b. Important new information
The corpus also contains instances of OV in which the object constitutes important
new information. In (73), the preverbal object tóro aɽikata ‘the piece “El Toro” (“The
Bull”)’ is new information that adds specificity to the previous description of the music
being played.
(73)0 ??‘[Then, they play the SNARE DRUM, then the REED FLUTE, a PIECE OF MUSIC, and
??‘[they go around there; on the road play two people, and again {there’s}
??‘[music;]
??‘[tóro aɽikata kústasintiksi ya…
(Chamoreau 2004:125, (53-57))
(ξ)00 ??‘[tóro
aɽi -kata
??‘[“El Toro” say -PRF.PART.PASS
............piece.............
(ξ)00
??‘[kús
-ta
-sin -∅ -ti
=ksi
ya…
??‘[sound -CAUS -HAB -PRS -IND+3 =SUBJ.3.PL already
??‘[.........play.......
(ξ)00 ??[‘they play the piece “EL TORO” (“THE BULL”)…’
In (74), the preverbal object xuchí sapíichani ‘my kids’ introduces a new referent into
the discourse that will remain relevant for a while (beyond what is shown below).
47
(74)0 ??‘[para xuchí sapíichani eróaantʼani,
(Capistrán Garza 2004:70, (34-36))
(π)00 ??‘[para [xuchí sapí
-icha -ni
??‘[for
[my
small/child -PL
-ACC
(π)00 ??‘[eró -a -a
-ntʼa -ni]
??‘[wait -FT -OBJ.3.PL -ITER -NONFIN
(π)00 ??‘[to wait for my kids,
??‘[when they get there (= home), in order to feed them.]
IV.A.2.c. Countering of expectation
There is somewhat less evidence of SOV structures in the corpus in which the object
is preverbal because it is contrary to expectation. This is because, in the two examples
that may fit this description ((75-76)), the preverbal object means (roughly) ‘nothing’,
which may reflect a separate tendency for negative objects to appear preverbally.
Of course, the lack of SOV clauses in which the object is unequivocally preverbal
because it is unexpected does not contradict Capistrán’s model, but it suggests that it
might be desirable to have more examples of this phenomenon than the three she provides (see Capistrán 2002:371-372, (14-15), and 373, (19)).
In (75), the object ampé ‘(some)thing’ (which together with the negation produces
roughly the interpretation ‘nothing’) might be preverbal because it is surprising, and
hence worthy of emphasis, that the speaker’s daughter would not say anything (presumably anything rude) to her.61
61
That ‘She doesn’t say anything to me’ in this context might actually mean ‘She doesn’t say anything rude
to me’ is suggested by the previous sentence, ‘She behaves very well with me’, and the following one,
‘Speak rudely, she doesn’t at all’.
48
(75)0 ??‘[She behaves very well with me,]
??‘[námpirini ampé arhíhki nítʼu;
(Capistrán Garza 2004:85, (121))
(ρ)00 ??‘[námpi =ri+ni
-∅ -ki
ampé
arhí -h
??‘[NEG
=SUBJ.SG/OBJ.1.SG (some)thing say -HAB -PRS -CLAR
(ρ)00 ??‘[ní =tʼu;
??‘[nor =too
??‘[....either....
(ρ)00 ??[‘she doesn’t say {anything / things} to me either;’
??‘[speak rudely, she doesn’t at all.]
Similarly, in (76), the object noompéni ‘nothing’ might be preverbal because it is unexpected that, having broken A’s millstone, Pedro would be planning to do nothing about
it.
(76)0 ??‘[A: Pedro broke my millstone. C: And then what happened? A:]
??‘[pensárišati noompéni úni.
-∅ -ti
??‘[pensá -ri -ša
no ampé -ni
ú -ni.
??‘[plan
-FT -PROG -PRS -IND+3 NEG thing -ACC do -NONFIN
??‘[lit. ‘He plans to do nothing.’
??‘[id. ‘He’s not planning to do anything about it.’
??‘[He told them a lie.]
(adapted from Chamoreau 2003:54)
But as mentioned above, the situation here is not clear.
IV.A.2.d. Contrast
The corpus does, however, contain instances of SOV in which it is fairly clear that
the object is preverbal because it is contrastive. In (77), the direct object appears to be a
three-part asyndetic coordination. This is naturally a heavy phrase, so we might have expected it to occur clause-finally, but it appears before the verb, presumably because some
of the conjuncts (at least the first two) contrast with one another:
49
(77)0 ??‘ánkhu ma tarola ánkhu ma karisu ma aɽirakata kústani…
(τ)00 ??‘ánkhu ma tarola
ánkhu ma karisu
??‘then
a
snare.drum then
a
reed.flute
(τ)00 ??‘ma aɽi -ra
-kata
kús
-ta
-ni…
??‘a
say -CAUS -PRF.PART.PASS sound -CAUS -NONFIN
........play........
(τ)00 ??‘Then, they play the SNARE DRUM, then the REED FLUTE, a PIECE OF MUSIC…’
(Chamoreau 2004:124, (53))
In (78), the object mámaru ampé ‘many things’ may be preverbal because, being a
general summary, it contrasts with the specific examples of household chores that precede it. Alternatively, it may be a detail restatement (see section IV.A.2.e), to give added
salience to the old information of the chores that the speaker’s daughter does around the
house.
(78)0 ??‘[‘And my oldest daughter, she helps me a lot, because she sometimes makes
??‘[the food, she washes the clothes,]
??‘[imá mámaru ampé úsïnti yá…
??‘[imá
má- ma -ru ampé ú -sïn -∅
-ti
yá…
??‘[that/she one one -PL thing
do -HAB -PRS -IND+3 already
........many........
??[‘she does a BUNCH of things…’
(Capistrán Garza 2004:74, (55-58))
IV.A.2.e. Detail restatement
Lastly, the corpus contained some SOV structures in which the object is plausibly
preverbal because of detail restatement. On this explanation, the objects in (79, 82-83)
are in the emphatic preverbal position because the speaker wished62 to give them added
prominence, even though they are discourse-old.
If the OV order in (79) is due to detail restatement, then the preverbal placement of
yámintuetʃani ‘everyone’ serves to keep it salient in the discourse. Alternatively, it
62
Not necessarily consciously, of course.
50
could be preverbal purely for emphasis: ‘he already blessed EVERYONE…’ (surprising or
striking as that may be), or to contrastively focus it with an implicit alternative: ‘he already blessed EVERYONE (not just SOME people).’
(79)0 ??‘[When they get there (= to church), the priest comes out, blesses everyone,]
??‘[yámintuetʃani útʃhakuraasti ya…
(φ)00 ??‘[yámintu -etʃa -ni
??‘[all
-PL
-ACC
(φ)00 ??‘[ú
-∅ -ti
-tʃha63
-ku
-ra
-a
-s
??‘[cover -LOC(narrow area) -OBJ.3 -CAUS -OBJ.3.PL -PFV -PRS -IND+3
(φ)00 ??‘[ya…
??‘[already
(τ)00 ??[‘he already blessed everyone…’
(Chamoreau 2004:128, (83-85))
We would not expect yámintuetʃani ‘everyone’ to be a topic (presumably serving as a
discourse link to the previous yámintuetʃani), because universally quantified NPs are
illicit topics in English:
(80)0
(81)0
a.
b.
a.
b.
*Εveryone, I saw. No one, JOHN saw.
*Εvery boy, I saw. No boy, JOHN saw.
*As for everyone, I saw them.
*As for every boy, I saw him.
Of course, P’urhépecha could conceivably be different in this regard, but this would have
to be demonstrated, preferably by elicitation.
In (82-83), which are close together in the same narrative, the preverbal placement
of sapíni ‘child’ and xuchí sapíni ‘my child’ plausibly serves to keep their referent salient even though she is old information. This is particularly plausible for (82), because the
daughter continues to be relevant after its utterance (as we see in (83)).
63
Foster (1969:94, §710.5) appears to define this locative suffix as ‘neck, back of head’.
51
(82)0 ??‘[And here my aunt was going to take care of my daughter for me, and I gave
??‘[her to them (= my aunts), so that I could work. And afterwards, here,]
??‘[xuchí tíaicha no wékaspti yá sapínitsʼïni íntskuntʼani…
(χ)00 ??‘[xuchí tía
-icha no wé
≠ka -s
-p
-ti
yá
??‘[my
aunt -PL
not want ≠FT -PFV -PST -IND+3 already
(χ)00 ??‘[sapí
-ni
=tsʼï+ni
ínts ≠ku -ntʼa -ni…
??‘[small/child -ACC =SUBJ.PL/OBJ.1.SG give ≠FT -ITER -NONFIN
(χ)00 ??[‘my aunts didn’t want to give me my daughter back…’
(Capistrán Garza 2004:78-79, (81-84))
(83)0 ??‘ká tsʼïmátsʼïni nó xyáspti xuchí sapíni íntskuntʼani yá…
(ψ)00 ??‘ká tsʼïmá
=tsʼï+ni
nó xyá
-s
-p
-ti
??‘and those/they =SUBJ.PL/OBJ.1.SG not agree/want -PFV -PST -IND+3
(ψ)00 ??‘xuchí sapí
-ni
ínts ≠ku -ntʼa -ni
yá…
??‘my
small/child -ACC give ≠FT -ITER -NONFIN already
(τ)00 ??[‘and they didn’t want/agree to give me my daughter back…’
(Capistrán Garza 2004:78-79, (89))
IV.A.3. Possible counterevidence
Capistrán’s (2002:370-374) claims about (S)OV in P’urhépecha were borne out by
the corpus analysis. As inventoried in (15), the texts examined represented the following
dialect areas: Lake Pátzcuaro (the Eastern region), the Marsh of Zacapu (the Northeastern region), and the P’urhépecha Plateau or Meseta.
However, it seems that Capistrán’s analysis cannot be extended to data elicited from
Speaker 1, who is from the Cañada de los Once Pueblos (Gully of the Eleven Towns)
dialect area.
This speaker did produce some sentences that can be accounted for under Capistrán’s hypothesis. For instance, in (84), the object pʼitákatani ‘drawing’ is significantly
52
more informative than the verb uxapti ‘was making’. Therefore, its appearance in the
prominent preverbal position can be explained by its being important new information:
(84)0 ??‘Nicolasï pʼitákatani uxapti.
(elicited from Speaker 1)
??‘Nicolasï pʼitá
-kata
-ni
u
-xa
-p
-ti.
??‘Nicholas take.out? -PRF.PART.PASS -ACC make -PROG -PST -IND+3
..............drawing...............
??‘Nicholas was making a drawing.’
However, the same speaker also produced OV utterances that do not fall under any of
Capistrán’s five cases. The following four examples (like the previous one) were elicited
under conditions intended to induce pragmatically neutral syntax (see section III.A):
(85)0 ??‘Carla pixikini pʼuninajti.
(elicited from Speaker 1)
(é)00 ??‘Carla pixiki -ni
??‘Carla balloon -ACC
(é)00 ??‘pʼuni -ne
-∅ -ti.
-a
-j
??‘blow -LOC(inside (surface)) -TRANS? -PFV -PRS -IND+3
(é)00 ??‘Carla blew up the balloon.’
(86)0 ??‘Estebanu cajani míkajti.
(elicited from Speaker 1)
-∅ -ti.
??‘Estebanu caja -ni
mí -ka -j
64
??‘Steven
box -ACC ?
-FT -PFV -PRS -IND+3
...close...
??‘Steven closed the box.’
(87)0 ??‘Luis refreskuni tsïtajti.
(elicited from Speaker 1)
-∅ -ti.
??‘Luis refresku -ni
tsïta
-j
??‘Louis soda
-ACC lose… -PFV -PRS -IND+3
??‘Louis spilled the soda.’
(88)0 ??‘Olga edificiuni chararajti.
(elicited from Speaker 1)
-∅ -ti.
??‘Olga edificiu -ni
chara
-ra
-j
??‘Olga building -ACC explode(INTRANS) -CAUS -PFV -PRS -IND+3
??‘Olga exploded the building.’
64
On the meaning of this root, see Capistrán Garza 2004:72, fn. 29.
53
(85-86) could conceivably turn out to be exemplifying generic OV. However, this seems
unlikely. The objects in these sentences are overtly marked for accusative case, whereas
those in the examples of generic OV we have seen—(67-68)—are not. It is also unlikely
that the OV order in (85-88) can be explained by any of Capistrán’s other cases, i.e., by
O being important new information, unexpected, contrastive, or especially detail-restated
(since these examples were elicited and have no real discourse context except ‘What
happened?’).
It therefore seems that Capistrán’s analysis of OV made correct predictions for the
dialect areas represented in the ten-text corpus, but not for the dialect of the Cañada de
los Once Pueblos.
During the same series of elicitations (which, again, were aimed at inducing pragmatic neutrality), the speaker of this last dialect also produced SVO utterances. This
raises the possibility that, in this dialect, both SVO and SOV can be pragmatically neutral, which would be a counterexample to Bolinger’s Dictum. Establishing this would
require a more in-depth study of this dialect. It would be worthwhile to test the hypothesis that some projection of V (either VP or the one dominating only V and O, i.e., V’ in
the X’ schema) is indifferent to linearization. (Such an explanation seems intuitively
more satisfying than positing a seemingly unmotivated movement.)
IV.A.4. Conclusion
As we have seen, not all the instances of (S)OV in the corpus (in which O is not in a
left-peripheral discourse-functional position) can be unambiguously identified as belonging to one of Capistrán’s five categories. Nevertheless, these categories—between
them—seem to be able to explain virtually all the instances of SOV in the corpus. How-
54
ever, Capistrán’s analysis seems to work only for the dialects represented in the corpus,
and not for the dialect of the Cañada de los Once Pueblos (Gully of the Eleven Towns).
IV.B. VS(O)
IV.B.1. Capistrán’s claims
Capistrán (2002) attributes exactly three functions to the word order VS(O).
First, it is used in yes/no questions (YNQs) (p. 360).65 To my knowledge, there has
not yet been a detailed syntactic study of P’urhépecha questions. However, the natural
hypothesis in a transformational framework would be that VS(O) in YNQs is typically
derived by V-movement from SV(O),66 perhaps to C to check a [+Q] feature.
Secondly, VS(O) is apparently used in answers to VS(O) YNQs as well (p. 360).
This could potentially have to do with the fact that not only questions but also some answers to questions use the “clarificational” or interrogative mood (Foster 1969:57, §414).
However, we will here leave questions aside.
Thirdly, VS(O) can be used as a PRESENTATIONAL word order, serving to introduce a
new entity into the discourse (Capistrán 2002:361). This word order can have the same
discourse function in English, as shown by the following examples. (The verbs are boldfaced.)
65
However, this is not obligatory: ‘did he strike…?’ may be expressed as atáspi imá…? (VS) or imá
atáspi…? (SV) (Wares 1974:96). Wares indicates that the more common of the two orders is probably
VS. To my knowledge, it is not known whether SV in YNQs represents the same syntactic configuration as
in SV statements or, alternatively, leftward V-movement (as in VS YNQs) masked in the linear order by
topicalization of S.
66
This hypothesis relies on the assumption that SVO is the basic word order in P’urhépecha (Capistrán
2002:376, Chamoreau 2007:134; see fn. 53 for the details of Capistrán’s claim to this effect). This assumption seems well founded, for the following reasons. First, the SVO clauses in the ten-text corpus behaved
as predicted by Capistrán’s hypothesis. Secondly, as we established in section IV.A, SOV—another a priori candidate for the status of pragmatically neutral word order—actually seems to be pragmatically
marked in virtually every instance.
55
(89)0 ??‘From the flagpole waved a tattered banner.
(90)
(91)
(92)
??‘There’s a problem here.
??‘There exists a solution.
??‘There occurred a great misfortune.
(Levin & Rappaport Hovav
1995:259, (80a))
(the verb be)
(unaccusative verb)
(unaccusative verb)
An example of presentational VS from my P’urhépecha corpus is the following (verbs
boldfaced):
(93)0 ??‘[Then, they play the SNARE DRUM, then the REED FLUTE, a PIECE OF MUSIC,
??‘[and they go around there;]
??‘[ʃanari kústani tsimani kwhiripuetʃa…
??‘[ʃanari kús
-ta
-ni
tsimani kwhiripu -etʃa…
??‘[street sound -CAUS -NONFIN two
person
-PL
........play........
??[‘on the road play two people…’
(Chamoreau 2004:124, (53-55))
In (93), kústani ‘play an instrument’ is old information; the function of the utterance is
to introduce tsimani kwhiripuetʃa ‘two people’ into the discourse. In fact, it may well be
that, for this reason, kústani—normally a lexically rich verb assigning an Agent θ-role—
has been “copularized” in (93) and means little more than ‘be’ (Harves 2002:60), just
like the Russian verb in (94):
(94)0 ??‘meždu
brevnami ne
skryvalos’ tarakanov.
??‘between beams
NEG hid
cockroaches.GEN
??‘There were no cockroaches (hiding) among the beams.’
(Harves 2002:57, (57a))67
IV.B.2. Another discourse function for VS: V focused or new, S backgrounded
The analysis of the ten P’urhépecha texts in (15) revealed the existence of a fourth
discourse function for VS order not mentioned in Capistrán (2002). VS can be used when
67
For more examples from Russian, see Harves (2002:58, (57b-c)).
56
the verb is focused, or discourse-new, and the subject, being discourse-old, is deemphasized.68 Four examples from the corpus follow.
In (95), the thieves have already been introduced into the narrative and are hence old
information, whereas this is the first mention of their running:
(95)0 ??‘wiríani šipápiriiča…
(Chamoreau 2003:47)
??‘wirí -a
-ni
šipá -pi -ri
-iča…
??‘flee -PRELOC -NONFIN steal -? -PRS.PART.ACT -PL
??‘..........run.........
??‘The thieves were RUNNING.’
Because it is new information, wiríani ‘to run’ could be considered to be in contrast with
the other things the thieves were doing earlier.
In (96), pastori ‘shepherds’ has already been mentioned, and thus occurs after the
discourse-new verb xamasinti ‘go (around)’:
(96)0 ??‘[And then the shepherds begin to sing. The musicians, the old men, the
??‘[maringuías,69 and the little kids are really happy, that’s why they do this
??‘[every year, the so-called takari,]
??‘[ka kínse díya xamasintiksi pastori…
??‘[ka kínse díya xa ma -sin -∅ -ti
=ksi
pastori…
??‘[and fifteen day be -ADV -HAB -PRS -IND+3 =SUBJ.3.PL shepherd
......go.....
??[‘and for fifteen days, the shepherds go around…’ (Chamoreau 2004:120, (15))
In (97), in the infinitival clause waɽani tsirini ‘for the costillas to dance’, tsirini
‘costillas’ is old information, having been mentioned in the previous clause. Waɽani ‘to
dance’, by contrast, is new: it indicates what specifically the group wants the (already
mentioned) costillas to do.
68
Capistrán does mention (p. 351, fn. 4) that the claim that VSO focuses the verb was made by Soto Bravo
(1982:190-193). However, she contends that this study is not based on an analysis of texts and does not
take into account all the various factors that can affect word order. The present section provides corpus
evidence in favor of Soto Bravo’s claim.
69
Maringuías are a type of male dancer (for details, see Chamoreau 2004:96). In this context, so are the
‘old men’.
57
(97)0 ??‘yási wékasinka tsirini, waɽani tsirini…
(Chamoreau 2004:123, (39))
??‘yási wé -ka
-sin -∅ -ka
tsirini, waɽa -ni
tsirini...
want
STAT
HAB
PRS
IND
+1
costilla
dance
NONFIN
costilla
??‘now
??‘Now we want the costillas, [we want] the costillas to DANCE…’
And in (98B), nó níaka ‘will not go’ precedes the subject thú ‘you’. This seems to
be because the former is counterassertively focused: it is being used to contradict the
other speaker’s assertion that she will go. Of course, the níaka ‘will go’ of nó níaka
‘will not go’ is actually old information (as it appears in (98A)), but it seems to have followed the (discourse-new) negation to the presubject focus position.
(98)0 A: ??‘…xíthu níakani.
(Chamoreau 2003:40-41)
h
??‘…xí =t u ní -a
-ka
=ni.
??‘…I =too go -FUT -IND+1 =SUBJ.1.SG
??‘…I’ll go too.’
[…]
(d)00 B: ??‘…nó, nó níaka thú…
??‘…nó, nó ní -a
-ka
thú… ??‘…NEG NEG go -FUT -IND+2 you
??…‘No, you will NOT go…’
IV.B.3. Possible counterevidence
The following three examples feature VS structures whose explanations may not be
immediately obvious.70
Consider (99), for instance:
70
Naturally, considerations of space prevent us from examining every data point in the corpus that raises
questions.
58
(99)0 ??‘ka tékhamati ya xuɽyata…
(Chamoreau 2004:127, (74))
(e)00 ??‘ka tékha
-ma
-ti
ya
??‘and pass.the.zenith -LOC(open area) -IND+3 already
(e)00 ??‘xuɽya -ta…
??‘be.day -PRF.PART.PASS
??‘.................sun................
(e)00 ??‘and the sun passes the zenith…’
The VS order in (99) cannot be exemplifying the pattern we have just discussed (focused
V, backgrounded S), because both ‘passing the zenith’ and xuɽyata ‘sun’ are completely
new in the narrative.71 (99) could conceivably be an instance of presentational VS, serving to introduce the sun into the discourse.
However, another important possibility is that tékhamati ‘passes the zenith’ is unaccusative, being a verb of involuntary motion (like the English drift). Assuming that unaccusative arguments are base-generated in direct-object position, the VS order in (99)
could be attributed to the Theme argument of tékhamati remaining in situ. Although this
is generally not allowed in English, it seems to be in P’urhépecha (see fn. 25).
We turn now to another example:
(100) ??‘[The members of Congress have kicked us and made fun of us;]
??‘[isiksï arhiasti pʼurhepecheecha ka turhisïicha enka… [orthography]
(f)00 ??‘[í
-∅
=si
=ksi
aɽí -a
-s
-ti
??‘[DEM =EMPH =SUBJ.3.PL say -OBJ.3.PL -PFV -PRS -IND+3
(f)00 ??‘[phuɽepeča -eča ka tuɽi
-si
-eča énka…
??‘[P’urhépecha -PL
and black -NMLZR -PL
that
......mestizo......
(f)00
??[‘thus the P’urhépechas and the mestizos have told them that…’
(Nava L. 2004:153 [Uárhi 2002])
71
One could argue that it was an example of “focused V, old S” if it were discovered that the sun is always
given information in the relevant speech community, but I am not aware of any evidence to this effect.
59
(100), like (99), is probably not an example of VS with V focused and S backgrounded,
because S does not seem to be discourse-old. (It is preceded in the text by two occurrences of the portmanteau clitic =tsïni ‘SUBJ.{2 or 3}/OBJ.1.PL’, hence the two ‘us’s in
the English translation, but this is the first explicit mention of ‘the P’urhépechas and the
mestizos’.)
The explantion may be that (100) is presentational. This claim may seem surprising,
since presentational constructions are often associated with relatively low-content verbs
such as be, exist, occur (see (90-92)), or the semantically weakened Russian skryvalos’
‘hide' in (94). However, Capistrán (2002:361, (2a-b)) provides examples suggesting that,
in P’urhépecha, even seemingly high-content verbs such as jupíni ‘seize, trap’ can appear in presentational VSO. The entity that the verb introduces tends to remain relevant
in the discourse for a while. This is certainly true of at least the first conjunct of the subject in (100): ‘the P’urhépechas’ remain topical throughout the entire text.
Finally, we come to this example:
(101) ??‘ka úntani ánkhu pastori aɽikuni…
(Chamoreau 2004:119, (10))
??‘ka ú
-nta
-ni
ánkhu pastori
aɽi -ku
-ni…
??‘and do? -ITER? -NONFIN then
shepherd say -OBJ.3 -NONFIN
........begin......
??‘and then the shepherds begin to sing…’
(101) cannot be an instance of VS with V focused and S old, because everything in this
clause is discourse-new. But if the utterance is pragmatically neutral, why do we seem to
have VS word order?
In English, aspectual verbs such as begin have been argued to be ambiguous between control and raising uses (Perlmutter 1968, 1970, cited in Fukuda 2007:159), and
60
this analysis has been extended to many other languages.72 If the P’urhépecha úntani
‘begin’ displays the same ambiguity—or even if it is only a raising verb—then (101) can
plausibly be analyzed as an instance of the raising verb úntani taking an infinitival complement with an overt subject (pastori ‘shepherds’). On this hypothesis, úntani is not in
any focus position; it is simply heading the main-clause VP.
This would seem to work semantically. On this analysis of (101), pastori ‘shepherds’ would be an argument of aɽikuni ‘sing’, but not of úntani ‘begin’, since raising
verbs assign no external θ-role. This predicts that (101) would be interpreted as something like ‘then it begins to be the case that [the shepherds are singing]’, which is consistent with the translation given for this example.
Of course, this explanation will remain a hypothesis until such time as the raising or
control properties of P’urhépecha aspectual verbs such as úntani are investigated.
IV.C. Summary
As mentioned previously, the corpus data analyzed were highly consistent with the
predictions of Capistrán’s (2002) claims about the information-structural interpretation
of various P’urhépecha word orders.
Virtually every instance of (S)OV not involving what I have called “generic OV”
was plausibly analyzable as pragmatically marked rather than neutral. Specifically, the
object was prominent in one of a number of ways: it constituted important new information, was unexpected, was in contrastive focus with something else, or had undergone
72
The ones mentioned in Fukuda (2007:159) are French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Tsez.
61
detail restatement. However, this analysis apparently cannot be extended to the Cañada
de los Once Pueblos dialect, where it seems that SOV can be pragmatically neutral.
The corpus analysis also confirmed Soto Bravo’s (1982:190-193; cited in Capistrán
2002:351, fn. 4) claim that VS(O) focuses the verb, a claim for some reason not discussed by Capistrán. Indeed, VS(O) can be used when V is focused or new information
and S is discourse-old and hence backgrounded.
V. The syntax of OV and VS
As we have seen, the two major findings of the corpus analysis were the following:
1. As claimed by Capistrán (2002:370-374), OV73 makes the object prominent in
any of a number of ways.
2. VS can be used when V is focused or new information and S is discourse-old and
hence deemphasized.
In other words, OV involves O-focus and VS involves V-focus. Can these two instances
of focus be given a completely unified syntactic description?
At this point, it appears that the answer is no: the focused O in OV and the focused
V in VS occupy different positions. In this section, I will propose a model that attempts
to reduce both cases of focus to a single syntactic position, and it will be shown that this
model makes an incorrect prediction. The model will thus be revised accordingly.
Before we begin formulating our syntactic model, though, there is a question we
should address.
73
Excluding cases of “generic OV” and clauses in which O is in one of Capistrán’s left-peripheral discourse-functional positions: SpecTopExtP, SpecCP (internal-topic position), or SpecFocP (where, on Capistrán’s analysis, it would receive a cleftlike interpretation and appear with the clitic =sï (pp, 353, 357)).
62
V.A. Are all the subtly different interpretations of OV induced by the same movementdriving feature?
If SVO and SOV could both receive pragmatically neutral interpretations (in the dialects represented in the corpus), we would have had to revise some aspect of our notion
of the relationship between syntax and semantics in P’urhépecha (which would have implications for what languages in general permit in this domain). Possible courses of action would have included, though not necessarily been limited to, the following:
1. Hypothesizing that some projection of V is indifferent to linearization. Whether
we took this to be the smallest projection dominating both V and O (i.e., V’ in the
X’ schema) or VP itself (the maximal projection of V), this would make strong
predictions about word order within VPs containing more than just a verb and an
object.
2. Positing a movement to derive one word order from the other (say, leftward Omovement over V), in which case we would want the movement to be motivated.
If motivating it turned out to be impossible, then the movement account might
seem ad hoc. Furthermore, the seeming free variation between SVO and SOV
would have been a counterexample to Bolinger’s Dictum.
However, this is not what the corpus analysis revealed. Rather, it seems that, for the
dialects at hand, Capistrán was right: SVO is pragmatically neutral and SOV is marked.
On an approach in which pragmatically marked word orders are transformationally derived from the neutral one, these information-structural facts are compatible with mainstream hypotheses about grammatical architecture (the Y-model) and the nature of semantic interpretation (that it is compositional and tree-based).
63
Let us adopt such an approach to the word-order variation we have observed. Specifically, let us hypothesize, at least for now, that marked word orders are derived from
the neutral one when a phrase bearing a discourse-functional feature such as [+T] or [+F]
moves to an appropriate discourse-functional position to check its feature. (A different
hypothesis will be discussed in the latter part of section V.C., “OV and VS as using different focus positions.”)
We then face the following question. Capistrán claims, and the corpus analysis confirmed, that OV can have subtly different discourse functions: the object can be important new information, unexpected, contrastively focused, or detail-restated. Does this require us to posit that there exist four separate features [+IMPORTANT
NEW INFO],
[+UNEXPECTED], [+FCONTRASTIVE], and [+DETAIL RESTATEMENT], and that the head against
which they are checked can realize all these features syncretically?
This complication is unnecessary and unjustified. All four of these possible information-structural interpretations of OV are clearly similar and related: they all lend prominence to the object. It therefore suffices to have a single feature, which I will call [+F].
On the hypothesis being developed here, this one feature drives the movement that derives OV in all four cases. Whether the object is interpreted as important new information, unexpected, contrastive, or detail-restated74 is a question of pragmatics and context.
All we need the feature for is to derive the OV word order; pragmatics can take care of
the rest.
74
The boundaries between these cases are not always clear—another reason to be suspicious of the idea of
distinguishing them with four discrete features.
64
V.B. Do OV and VS use the same focus position?
Because we want our theories to be as simple as possible without sacrificing explanatory power, it is natural to try to explain the two information-structural patterns at
hand—OV with O-focus and VS with V-focus—in a unified way, by associating the focus in both cases with a single focus position. How might this be accomplished?
Devine & Stephens (2006:26) propose that, in Latin, every major XP (where X ∈
{N, V, Adj} at least75) is dominated by a pair of discourse-functional projections whose
specifiers host topical and focused elements. As mentioned in fn. 10, their trees show
only the specifiers of these projections and not their heads, but we will represent both:
(102)
??‘
We do not have anywhere near enough evidence to make such a strong crosscategorial claim for P’urhépecha. However, suppose that one nonclausal XP in
P’urhépecha—namely VP—is dominated by a focus projection:76
75
Devine & Stephens state that this schema “is crosscategorial: it applies more or less equally to noun
phrases, verb phrases and adjective phrases, and elements of it are recognizable even in prepositional
phrases” (p. 27).
76
This structure is consistent with Capistrán’s (2002:374, including fn. 29) analysis, according to which Ofocused (S)OV does not involve any movements out of IP. To support her claim that the O in these structures is not in the specifier of the left-peripheral FocP, she provides evidence that a focused O in OV can
cooccur with a left-peripheral focus marked with the clitic =sï (pp. 393-394, (47-48)). Capistrán does not
present a detailed proposal for the syntax of VO vs. OV, but see her pp. 375-376 for some discussion.
65
(103)
??‘
This structure, combined with the transformational approach we are taking, can capture
the fact that SVO is pragmatically neutral and SOV focuses the object, as follows.
Under ordinary circumstances, an NP merged as the complement of V stays there.
Assuming that the subject is in a specifier in the inflectional layer (let’s call it SpecIP),
this yields the word order SVO.
If the NP merged as the complement of V bears the focus feature [+F], this feature
must be checked. An NP can be inserted into the derivation with either a strong or a
weak [+F] feature. Either way, the feature must move to SpecFocP so that it can be
checked against the Foc° head in a local Spec–head configuration. If the feature is
strong, then the NP77 bearing it moves overtly; if the feature is weak, then the movement
77
Vázquez-Rojas Maldonado (2011) claims that topicalization of a noun in P’urhépecha can pied-pipe all
its modifiers or strand some of them. The latter possibility is shown in the following example:
(v)00
??‘vakani atárhantaska turhípitini.
(v)00
??‘vaka
??‘cow
-ni
-ACC
xxx(i)
??‘turhí
??‘black
-pi
-PREDMID
xxx(i)
??‘I sold the black cow.’ [This translation does not reflect the example’s information structure.]
atá
-rha -nta
strike? -?
-ITER?
...............sell................
-ti
-PRS.PART.ACT?
(Vázquez-Rojas Maldonado 2011, (26a))
-s
-PFV
-∅
-PRS
-ka
-IND+1
-ni.
-ACC
Two important questions for further research are 1) whether topicalization and focus movement permit the
same pied-piping possibilities (and if not, whether this is an irreducible idiosyncrasy of the [+T] and [+F]
features), and 2) whether material stranded by these movements does not have the pragmatic value driving
them. If this last hypothesis is correct, and (v) is indeed an instance of topicalization, then the example
presumably means something like ‘As for the cows, I sold the black one’, and any material stranded by
66
is covert. This distinction can be implemented using Move F: a strong feature, when
moving, pied-pipes the phrase it appears on; a weak feature does not.
The [+F] feature has an effect on both PF (when this feature is strong) and LF,
where it causes the phrase bearing it to be interpreted as focused. This interpretation then
presumably interacts with pragmatics to produce the various specific informationstructural effects associated with OV in P’urhépecha (important new information, countering of expectations, contrastive focus, and detail restatement).
The [+F] feature must be allowed to be either strong or weak because SOV entails
O-focus, but O-focus is compatible with SVO (see fn. 53).
Our model now accounts for the information-structural interpretations of SVO and
SOV. To make it account for VS as well (where V is focused and S backgrounded), we
would ideally like to exploit the same focus position as before: the specifier of the FocP
local to VP.78 Let us allow the verb to be inserted into the derivation with a [+F] feature.
It can thus overtly raise to SpecFocP, just like the object in SOV.
However, this alone will not give us VS word order, because the subject is still in
SpecIP and will thus still precede the verb. To remedy this, let us posit that P’urhépecha
is correctly described by the VP-Internal–Subject Hypothesis. On this hypothesis, subjects in SpecIP reach their surface position by movement from within the VP:
focus movement is presupposed or old information and not actually focused. (I am not certain what the
morpheme -rha in atárhantaska ‘I sold’ means, but it appears to be realized as -ra in other dialects.)
78
For the time being, I will set aside the possibility that the V in V-focused VS is in the specifier of the leftperipheral FocP. This is because, according to Capistrán (2002:353, 357), phrases in this position are
marked with the clitic =sï, which produces cleftlike or pseudocleftlike readings (Foster 1969:52, §329;
Capistrán 2002:392). Such readings seem inappropriate for at least some of the examples of V-focused VS
in section IV.B.2. For instance, ‘it’s RUNNING that the thieves were doing’ would be bizarre in (95), because in the preceding context there seems to be no presupposition that the thieves are doing anything in
particular. Likewise, in (98B), there seems to be no particular reason to think that ‘No, it’s NOT going that
you’ll do…’ is closer to the meaning than ‘No, you will NOT go…’. In addition to these arguments (which
are based on the discourse context of the VS clauses at hand), it may be worth noting that none of the
sources of the VS clauses in section IV.B.2 provide cleftlike or pseudocleftlike translations for them.
67
(104)
??‘
This movement is thought to be motivated by the need to check a [+NOM] Case feature or
to satisfy the EPP, depending on the language and the analysis. On standard analyses, not
all languages require this movement to occur overtly (this could be a parameter of linguistic variation). English, in normal main clauses, does. But Spanish does not; and this
fact, combined with the hypothesis that V obligatorily raises to T in this language, correctly predicts that both SVO and VSO are well-formed orders in Spanish. The same
analysis is standardly given for languages with VSO as the default surface word order,
except that in these languages, the subject must not raise out of VP overtly. (It presumably still needs to check a Case feature covertly, though.)
If P’urhépecha, like Spanish, is a language in which subject movement from SpecVP
to SpecIP need not occur overtly, then it seems we can unify our analysis of OV (with Ofocus) and VS (with V-focus). VS clauses in which V is focused would have the following (partial) structure:
68
(105)
??‘
V has moved to the specifier of the VP-local FocP, and the subject NP has not overtly
moved out of VP.
The two processes that, on this hypothesis, yield V-focused VS are presumably independent:
1. The subject can either overtly leave the VP or not.
2. The specifier of the VP-local FocP can be filled by (at least) either V or O (setting aside the cases in which nothing is focused and presumably no projection of
Foc is incorporated into the structure at all [cf. (26)]).
Because each of these processes, as sketched above, is a binary choice, we predict the
four scenarios in (106). (These scenarios are concerned only with overt movement.)
(106)
move O
S → SpecIP
+
move S
O → SpecFocP
SOV, O focused 
S stays in SpecVP +
don’t move S O → SpecFocP
OSV, O focused
move V
S → SpecIP
+
V → SpecFocP
SV(O), V focused
S stays in SpecVP +
V → SpecFocP
VS(O), V focused 
The checkmarks () in the top left and bottom right cells of (106) indicate that the
word orders therein do indeed have the interpretations that the model predicts (unsurpris-
69
ingly, as the model was based on these cases). However, the model also makes strong
predictions about the other two cases. Are these borne out?
Let us consider the top right cell first. The prediction is that SV(O) should be interpretable with V-focus. Capistrán (2002:381) provides a helpful overview of which word
orders are felicitous in response to which questions. Unfortunately, she only includes
subject and object questions, not verb questions, so these data cannot resolve the issue. I
have not actually tested this prediction, but it seems plausible that it would be borne out,
given that SVO can answer either a subject or an object question (Capistrán 2002:381)
(again, non-SVO → pragmatically marked, but the reverse does not hold).
The bottom left cell predicts that OSV should be interpretable with O-focus. This is
directly contradicted by Capistrán’s tables (p. 381) as well as one of her examples (p.
380, (31b)). According to these data, OSV can answer a subject question (in which case
the O is presumably in a topic position, serving as a discourse link to the question), but
not an object question.
To test this claim, three native speakers were asked which (if any) of the sentences
in (108) sounded natural and grammatical in response to the question in (107). The third
choice ((108c)) is the same as the second ((108b)) except with heavy stress on the object,
which is the intended focus. (I use the symbol  before the possible answers to indicate
that these examples are not yet to be interpreted as bearing any particular acceptability
judgment.)
70
(107) ??‘Ampeksï pyáski tumpíicha?79
-∅ -ki
??‘Ampe =ksï
pyá -s
tumpí
-icha?
80
??‘what
=SUBJ.3.PL buy -PFV -PRS -INTRG young.man -PL
??‘What did the young men buy?’
(adapted from Capistrán 2002:380, (31a))
(108) a. ‘ Tumpíichaksï tsúntsuichani pyásti.
(m)00 a. ‘ Tumpí
-icha =ksï
tsúntsu -icha -ni
‘ young.man -PL
=SUBJ.3.PL pot
-PL
-ACC
(m)00 a. ‘ pyá -s
-∅ -ti.
‘ buy -PFV -PRS -IND+3
(m)00 a.
‘The young men bought POTS.’
(based on Capistrán 2002:380, (31b))
(m)00 b. ‘ Tsúntsuichanksï tumpíicha pyásti.
(m)00 a. ‘ Tsúntsu -icha -ni
=ksï
tumpí
-icha
‘ pot
-PL
-ACC =SUBJ.3.PL young.man -PL
(m)00 a. ‘ pyá -s
-∅ -ti.
‘ buy -PFV -PRS -IND+3
(m)00 a.
‘The young men bought POTS.’ (adapted from Capistrán 2002:380, (31b))
(m)00 c. ‘ TSÚNTSUICHANKSÏ tumpíicha pyásti.
(m)00 a.
‘The young men bought POTS.’
(ditto)
One speaker gave an (apparently exhaustive) listing of two possible grammatical answers
including S, O, and V; this list included (108a), but not (108b) or (108c). A second
speaker confirmed that (108a) is grammatical, but recast (108b) and (108c) differently.81
The third speaker’s response was inconclusive.
79
To the extent possible, the orthography used in the question and possible answers was altered to match
that used by the speaker. The orthography shown here is that used by Speaker 1, who is from the Cañada
de los Once Pueblos (Gully of the Eleven Towns) dialect area; this orthography is very similar to the transcription used in Capistrán (2002).
80
This word also means ‘thing’ and ‘something’.
81
These speakers noted that repeating a full (informationally given) subject such as tumpíicha ‘the young
men’ in answering a question, as opposed to using a clitic or independent pronoun, is grammatical but unusual in conversation and not very natural. (One of them pointed out that repeating the subject is useful in
71
It therefore seems that the data in Capistrán (2002:380-381) are correct. This means
that our hypothesis, which attempted to explain both O-focused OV and V-focused VS
by using a VP-local FocP and the VP-Internal–Subject Hypothesis, is incorrect.
V.C. OV and VS as using different focus positions
Of course, the falsification of that particular hypothesis does not rule out all possible
hypotheses that aim to explain these two word orders using a single focus position. However, I have not been able to come up with an alternative hypothesis that does this. I have
therefore pursued a different approach.
Let us keep our analysis of O-focused OV, but discard the assumption that
P’urhépecha is correctly described by the VP-Internal–Subject Hypothesis (it may turn
out to be, but I am not aware of any currently existing evidence to this effect). Let us instead hypothesize that the V in V-focused VS is in the specifier of the left-peripheral
FocP after all.
We originally set this possibility aside (see fn. 78) because the cleftlike meaning associated with this position seemed inappropriate for at least some of our examples of Vfocused VS. However, this could be explained if the cleftlike meaning resides in the
clitic =sï, because this clitic can appear on “any constituent…except the verb” (Capistrán
2002:392, translation mine).
On this hypothesis, a V-focused VS(O) clause in P’urhépecha looks like this (assuming it has no internal or external topics):
a pedagogical setting.) However, the same is true of English to at least some extent (see (6), (9-10)), but
we wish to abstract away from this.
72
(109)
??‘
And so the hypothesis may be summarized as follows. O-focused OV and V-focused VS
in P’urhépecha use different focus positions. In the former, O is in the specifier of a FocP
local to VP. In the latter, V is in the specifier of the left-peripheral FocP; but because of
the curious ban on verbs appearing with the cleftlike focus clitic =sï (which I take to be
the normal lexical realization of the head Foc°), verbs in this position do not receive the
cleftlike interpretation that normal =sï-marked phrases in this position do.
Prof. Robert Freidin (p.c.) has pointed out to me that Foc° heads projecting FocPs
are not the only possible implementation of syntactic focus positions. It could instead be
that the O in O-focused OV and the V in V-focused VS receive their focused interpretations by virtue of being left-adjoined. On this hypothesis, O-focused OV and V-focused
VS would have the structures in (110) and (111) respectively:
73
(110)
(111)
??‘
??‘
These would then be two instances of a general rule of P’urhépecha stating that when an
element Y is left-adjoined to an element X, as in (112), Y is interpreted as focused. In
other words, (112) would be the P’urhépecha focus configuration.
(112)
??‘
Of course, such a general claim about the language could not be justified without much
more research. The claim makes the very strong prediction that any phrase left-adjoined
to an XP will be interpreted as focused. To test this prediction, we will need to be able to
tell whether an element is an adjunct or a member of a richly articulated functional structure, à la Cinque.
On the focus-by-adjunction hypothesis, the clitic =sï could not be the lexical realization of a left-peripheral Foc° head, because such a head would not exist. What would
presumably happen instead is the following: =sï would be added to an element either in
the lexicon or in the element’s base position, and then the =sï-marked phrase would
move and left-adjoin to IP (or possibly also VP, if the language allows it).
74
One possible problem for this approach is the following. =sï is presumably not
added in the lexicon, because (like the English possessive clitic -’s) it can attach to an
entire phrase:
(113) ??‘…tsima khoɽuntaetʃaʃi ewanaati.
??‘…[tsima khoɽunta -etʃa] =ʃi
ewa -na
-a
-ti.
??‘…[DEM.PL tamale
-PL
=FOC take -PASS -FUT -IND+3
??…[‘…these are the tamales which will be taken.’
(adapted from Chamoreau 2007:136, (22c))
It thus becomes difficult to avoid the impression that =sï is the realization of a functional
head.
Nevertheless, the focus-by-adjunction hypothesis is attractive for two reasons. First,
it posits less complex structure than the Foc-head hypothesis. Secondly, it reduces Ofocused OV and V-focused VS to one and the same process, whereas the Foc-head hypothesis will probably have to stipulate in some way—perhaps with reference to functional structure—where Foc can occur.
VI. Conclusion
VI.A. Summary of empirical findings
This study began with an investigation of P’urhépecha phrase structure in pragmatically neutral contexts, with the aim of being able to identify information-structurally motivated deviations from pragmatically neutral syntax. The investigation focused on headcomplement order within various types of constituents. For some of these constituents, it
is not yet certain what the head is. Nevertheless, the picture that seems to emerge from
this investigation is that certain constituents are rigidly ordered, whereas others permit
both orders (see (66) for the data). It is therefore not currently possible to characterize
P’urhépecha as a consistently head-initial or head-final language, but this may become
75
possible if the ordering flexibility in constituents such as PPs, [D NP] / [NP D], and [VP
V VP] / [VP VP V] turns out to be due to differences in information structure or hierarchical syntactic structure that have not yet been identified.
Then, ten P’urhépecha texts were analyzed with the objective of advancing our
knowledge of the relationship between information structure and syntax in this language.
The analysis of Capistrán (2002) was used as a starting point. This analysis was found to
be very successful: the vast majority of the data in the corpus were consistent with the
predictions of her model.
Particular attention was given to two word orders: OV and VS.
Despite my skepticism, the data seemed to bear out Capistrán’s claim that SVO is
pragmatically neutral in P’urhépecha whereas (S)OV82 makes the object prominent in
any of a number of ways. There were no or virtually no OV sequences that could not be
explained as falling into one of her categories: generic OV, O = important new information, O = contrary to expectation, O = contrastively focused, O = detail-restated. The last
four are all subcases of a more general phenomenon—focusing or emphasizing the object—and so it is not surprising that some OV tokens could admit of more than one explanation.
However, the success of Capistrán’s account of OV was confined to the dialects represented in the corpus (see section IV.A.3, “Possible counterevidence”), and did not extend to data produced by a speaker from the Cañada de los Once Pueblos (Gully of the
Eleven Towns), which seem to show that, in this dialect, SOV can be pragmatically neutral.
82
Again excluding “generic OV” and examples in which O is in a left-peripheral discourse-functional projection.
76
VS turned out to have an information-structural interpretation not discussed in Capistrán (2002:360-361), though correctly attributed to it in Soto Bravo (1982:190-193)
(cited in Capistrán 2002:351, fn. 4): it can be used when V is focused or discourse-new
and S is old information and hence backgrounded.
VI.B. The state of the theoretical model, and some directions for future research
A syntactic model that attempted to unify O-focused OV and V-focused VS by
combining a single FocP local to VP with the VP-Internal–Subject Hypothesis incorrectly predicted that OSV should be able to focus the object.
It therefore seems probable that O-focused OV and V-focused VS do not in fact use
the same focus position, but rather two different ones. According to the revised model,
O-focused OV is still derived from the basic word order VO by leftward movement of O
to a preverbal focus position, but VS(O) is derived from the basic SV(O) by leftward
movement of V to a left-peripheral focus position. This position is normally associated
with the clitic =sï and with cleftlike readings. However, it is possible to exploit it to simply focus the verb in VS if we hypothesize that the cleftlike meaning resides entirely in
the clitic, because P’urhépecha disallows this clitic from appearing on verbs (Capistrán
2002:392).
At this point there are at least two possibilities for what exactly the two focus positions are. One possibility, suggested to me by Prof. Robert Freidin (p.c.), is that any
P’urhépecha element that is left-adjoined to an XP is interpreted as focused. If this is all
there is to focus in P’urhépecha, then we can speak of the P’urhépecha focus configuration: [XP Y XP]. This hypothesis makes very strong predictions that it would be interesting to test (an investigation that would probably reveal much of value about P’urhépecha
77
focus, adjunction, and functional structure). The second possibility is that the two focus
positions are specifiers of Foc heads. A difficulty faced by the adjunction approach is
that the clitic =sï can attach to a whole phrase; =sï-attachment therefore presumably
does not occur in the lexicon, and it becomes hard to escape the hypothesis that this clitic
is a functional head.
Attempting to tease apart the predictions of these two hypotheses would probably
teach us a great deal about P’urhépecha and quite possibly about linguistic theory in general.
VI.C. Broader implications
The overall picture that emerged from Capistrán (2002) was that the seemingly high
degree of variability in P’urhépecha word order could be explained with reference to information structure. The corpus analysis suggested that this is accurate, and even enriched Capistrán’s picture by reminding us of an information-structural interpretation
correctly ascribed to VS by Soto Bravo (1982:190-193) (cited in Capistrán 2002:351, fn.
4). It therefore appears that the facts of P’urhépecha word order do not oblige us to revise
the Y-model or the current mainstream conception of semantic interpretation.83
The reason we are not compelled to revise these ideas is that, since non-SVO word
orders in P’urhépecha seem to be pragmatically marked, it is plausible that they are derived from the basic SVO order by moving pragmatically marked elements to appropriate discourse-functional positions. This then makes our picture of P’urhépecha compatible with the aforementioned hypotheses, because the meaning of a P’urhépecha utterance
83
It also seems that we do not (yet?) need to declare indifferent to linearization any syntactic nodes in the
dialects represented in the corpus. This move may, however, be necessary to account for why SVO and
SOV are apparently both acceptable in pragmatically neutral contexts in the dialect of the Cañada de los
Once Pueblos.
78
could be computed compositionally at least partly on the basis of its underlying syntactic
structure—i.e., what the utterance would have sounded like before informationstructurally driven movement started disrupting constituents (a seemingly major problem
for compositional tree-based semantic interpretation). It would be much harder to square
the facts of P’urhépecha syntax with the Y-model and this conception of semantic interpretation if the language’s word-order variability, rather than being tied to meaningful
distinctions such as those made by information structure, were unmotivated. There may
be counterexamples to Bolinger’s Dictum out there. But the order of major constituents
in the P’urhépecha dialects represented in the ten-text corpus doesn’t appear to be one.84
84
On the other hand, the seeming acceptability of both SVO and SOV in pragmatically neutral contexts in
the dialect of the Cañada de los Once Pueblos, or of both [D NP] and [NP D], might be. But these questions must await further investigation.
79
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Texts analyzed and sources of examples
(See also (15) in the text.)
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Tusculanae Disputationes. Cited in Devine & Stephens (2006).
“Editorial.” Uárhi Ireta Pʼurhepecheo 17 [Morelia, Michoacán, Centro de Desarrollo
de la Mujer P’urhepecha] Aug. 2002: 2. In Nava L. (2004).
Hernández Dimas, Guadalupe. “Editorial.” Uárhi Ireta Pʼurhepecheo 1 [Morelia,
Michoacán, Centro De Desarrollo De La Mujer P’urhepecha] Feb. 1998: 2. Print. In
Nava L. (2004).
Lathrop, Máximo. “Na eŋga jindëka para sesi komaɹini. La oración y la regla de
oro.” Jimbanhi Eiatsperakua tata Jesucristueri. El nuevo testamento de Nuestro
Señor Jesucristo. Mexico City: Sociedad Bíblica Mexicana, 1960. 24. (Matt 7:7-12)
In Villavicencio Zarza (2006).
Plato. The Republic. Cited in Devine & Stephens (2000).
“Presentación.” Uárhi Ireta Pʼurhepecheo 1 [Morelia, Michoacán, Centro de Desarrollo de la Mujer P’urhepecha] Feb. 1998. In Nava L. (2004).
Rincón Romero, Agapito. “Uandánskua táta janíkuari. El dios de la lluvia,” in DGCPINI, “Nuestra palabra (Juchári uandákua). Narrativa purépecha.” Trans. Valente
Soto Bravo. El Nacional, special supplement, Year 1, No. 6. 3 Apr. 1990: 4. In Villavicencio Zarza (2006).
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