Research Articles

Exploiting syntax to circumvent morphology: word order as a means for marking grammatical categories

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Abstract

This paper serves to move closer to the goal outlined by Thompson by delineating the types of grammatical properties that are signalled by word order other than information structure and argument structure. It looks first at a typologically unusual word order alternation found in Iquito, a highly endangered Zaparoan language of the Peruvian Amazon, which uses word order to mark the reality status of a clause. It then situates the Iquito reality status word order alternation within a larger typology of word order alternations by presenting several other examples of grammatical categories that are expressed via word order alternations: negation in several West African languages, progressive aspect in Tikar (Benue-Congo; Cameroon) and Kokama-Kokamilla (Tupí-Guaraní; Peru, Brazil, Colombia), and definiteness in Puare (Macro-Skou; New Guinea) and K’iche’ (Mayan; Guatemala). It concludes by proposing that what unifies these grammatical categories is that they all occur on Hopper & Thompson’s (1980) Transitivity Scale, and that this scale can be used as a predictive measure for finding other word order alternations in future research.

Keywords: grammatical categories, word order, Iquito, West African languages, Tikar, Kokama-Kokamilla, Puare, K’iche’, Transitivity Scale, syntax, morphology

How to Cite:

Hansen, C., (2011) “Exploiting syntax to circumvent morphology: word order as a means for marking grammatical categories”, Language Documentation and Description 10, 288-306. doi: https://doi.org/10.25894/ldd199