Colloquium with Lauren Clemens, State University of New York at Albany

TITLE:  Focus and Word order in Mayan Languages: A closer look at Ch’ol

ABSTRACT:  Mayan languages are characterized by an underlying verb-initial word order with preverbal positions for topicalized and focused constituents (England 1991; Aissen 1992; Clemens & Coon 2018). Focusing on the role of the preverbal position in Mayan languages, this paper presents the findings of a production study of Ch’ol word order across various focus contexts, including (i) broad focus, (ii) subject focus, (iii) object focus, (iv) contrastive subject focus, and (v) contrastive object focus. We analyze semi-spontaneous responses from 31 Ch’ol speakers to questions designed to elicit these different focus types. Our analysis reveals that both verb-initial and subject-initial clauses appear across all five focus conditions, indicating a more complex relationship between information structure and word order than has been previously described for the family. Additionally, while contrastive focus is primarily marked by fronting of the focused constituent, we observe greater variation with information focus, where fronting is not obligatory in any of the focus conditions. Ongoing research brings morphological and prosodic evidence to bear on questions such as whether Ch’ol speakers encode focus in situ and whether information focus is obligatorily encoded in the language.