Cover not available

Article published In: Linguistic Variation: Online-First Articles

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

Fixed-VSO word order in Mayan is a syntactic, not prosodic, innovation

ORCiD logo with link | Haverford College
Published online: 25 September 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.24052.elk
Abstract
Fixed-VSO word order is understood to be a relatively recent innovation within the Mayan language family (. 1991. Changes in basic word order in Mayan languages. International Journal of American Linguistics 571:446–486. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), although it is a matter of recent debate whether this innovation is best understood as a prosodic (Clemens, Lauren & Jessica Coon. 2018. Deriving verb-initial word order in Mayan. Language 941:237–280. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) or a syntactic (. 2020b. Mutual dependencies of nominal and clausal syntax in Ch’ol. Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University.) one. This paper adjudicates between these two proposals by closely examining the fixed-VSO Mayan language Mam. The data from Mam are consistent with . 2020b. Mutual dependencies of nominal and clausal syntax in Ch’ol. Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University. syntactic approach by which objects raise overtly in the narrow syntax, where they hold certain structural and interpretational properties consistent with their high position.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Two accounts of the fixed-VSO innovation
    • 2.1The prosodic approach (Clemens & Coon 2018)
    • 2.2The syntactic approach (Little 2020b)
  • 3.Background on Mam
    • 3.1Mam morphosyntax
    • 3.2A note on data collection
  • 4.Evidence for the interpretation of VSO objects in Mam
    • 4.1Evidence from definiteness
    • 4.2Evidence from binding
    • 4.3Evidence from scope
    • 4.4Evidence from subextraction
    • 4.5Local summary
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (43)
References
Ables, Klaus & Ad Neeleman. 2012. Linear asymmetries and the LCA. Syntax 15(1):25–74. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Acker, Ann Michelle. 2016. Voice and valence in Q’anjob’al. Doctoral dissertation, UCLA.
Aissen, Judith. 1992. Topic and focus in Mayan. Language 681:43–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1997. On the syntax of obviation. Language 741:705–750. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1999. Agent focus and inverse in Tzotzil. Language 751:451–485. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brodkin, Dan. 2023. Two steps to high absolutive syntax: Austronesian voice and agent focus in Mandar. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 311:465–516. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bruening, Ben. 2010. Double object constructions disguised as prepositional datives. Linguistic Inquiry 41(2):287–305. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. Double object constructions and prepositional dative constructions are distinct: a reply to Ormazabal and Romero 2020. Linguistic Inquiry 49(1):123–150. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clemens, Lauren. 2014. Prosodic noun incorporation and verb-initial syntax. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University.
Clemens, Lauren & Jessica Coon. 2018. Deriving verb-initial word order in Mayan. Language 941:237–280. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clemens, Lauren & Maria Polinsky. 2017. VSO and VOS word order: primarily in Austronesian and Mayan languages. In Blackwell Companion to Syntax, 2nd ed., ed. by Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk 4747–4796. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Coon, Jessica, Pedro Mateo Pedro, and Omer Preminger. 2014. The role of case in A-bar extraction asymmetries: evidence from Mayan. Linguistic Variation 141:179–242. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davis, Henry. 1999. Word order and configurationality in St’át’imcets. In 34th international conference on Salish and Neighboring languages, 61–82.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Diesing, Molly. 1992. Indefinites. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dryer, Matthew. 2013. “Definite Articles.” In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) WALS Online (v2020.4) [Data set]. Zenodo. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elfner, Emily. 2012. Syntax-prosody interactions in Irish. Doctoral dissertation, UMass Amherst.
England, Nora. 1983. A Grammar of Mam: A Mayan Language. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1991. Changes in basic word order in Mayan languages. International Journal of American Linguistics 571:446–486. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Folli, Raffaella & Heidi Harley. 2007. Causation, obligation, and argument structure: on the nature of little v. Linguistic Inquiry 38(2):197–238. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guasti, Maria Teresa. 1996. Semantic restrictions in Romance causative constructions and the incorporation approach. Linguistic Inquiry 271:294–313.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guilfoyle, Eithne, Henrietta Hung, & Lisa Travis. 1992. Spec of IP and Spec of VP: Two subjects in Austronesian languages. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 101, 375–414. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax (Vol. 251). MIT press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Little, Carol Rose. 2020a. Left branch extraction, object shift, and freezing effects in Tumbalá Ch’ol. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 51.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020b. Mutual dependencies of nominal and clausal syntax in Ch’ol. Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University.
McCloskey, James. 2021. Predicates and heads in Irish clausal syntax. A revised and expanded version of McCloskey 2005. Ms., University of California, Santa Cruz.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Norman, William, and Lyle Campbell. 1978. Toward a Proto-Mayan syntax: a comparative perspective on grammar. In Papers in Mayan Linguistics, ed. Nora England, 136–156. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Miscellaneous Publications in Anthropology.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Otaki, Koichi, Koji Sugisaki, Noriaki Yusa, & Masatoshi Koizumi. 2019. Two routes to the Mayan VOS: from the view of Kaqchikel. 言語研究 (Gengo Kenkyu) 1561: 25–45.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pérez Vail, José Reginaldo. 2014. La inversión y obviación en mam de Cajolá. Master’s thesis, CIESAS, Mexico.
Ramchand, Gillian. 1996. Two subject positions in Scottish Gallic: the syntax-semantics interface. Natural Language Semantics 41:165–191. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. Deriving variable linearization: a commentary on Simpson and Syed (2013). Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 321:263282. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya. 1983. Coreference and bound anaphora: a restatement of the anaphora questions. Linguistics and Philosophy 61:47–88. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ross, John Robert. 1974. Three batons for cognitive psychology. In Cognition and the symbolic processes, ed. by W. Weimer, and D. Palermo, 63–124. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Royer, Justin. 2023. Binding and Anticataphora in Mayan. Linguistic Inquiry 1–64.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scott, Tessa. 2021. Formalizing three types of mixed A/A’ agreement. Presented at Move and Agree: Forum on the formal typology of A’ agreement. Hosted virtually by the University of British Columbia and McGill University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2011. The syntax-phonology interface. In J. A. Goldsmith, J. Riggle, & A. C. L. Yu (eds.), The handbook of phonological theory, 435–484. Blackwell Publishing. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tada, Hiraoki. 1993. The A/A-bar partition in derivation. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
Takita, Kensuke. 2020. Labeling for linearization. The Linguistic Review, 37(1), 75–116. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tollan, Rebecca, & Clemens, Lauren. 2022. Syntactic ergativity as a constraint on crossing dependencies: the perspective from Mayan. Linguistic Inquiry, 53(3), 459–499.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ussery, Cherlon. 2018. Inversion as rightward-dative shift in Icelandic ditransitives. In Proceedings of Nels 481. University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA: GLSA.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wexler, Kenneth, and Culicover, Peter. 1977. Some syntactic implications of a theory of language learnability. In Culicover, P., Wasow, T., and Akmajian, A., eds., Formal syntax, 7–60. New York, Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yuan, Michelle. 2022. Ergativity and object shift across Inuit. Language 981:510–551. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zavala, Roberto Maldonado. 2007. Inversion and obviation in Mesoamerica. In Endangered Languages, eds. Peter Austin and Andrew Simpson, volume Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft 141, 267–306. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. Alignment patterns. In The Mayan Languages, eds. Judith Aissen, Nora C. England, and Roberto Zavala Maldonado, 226–258. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue