Information Structuring in Papago Narrative Discourse

Abstract

In previous accounts, the word order of Papago (Uto-Aztecan, Arizona) has been described-in terms of syntactic roles-as SOV, SVO, and VSO. However, discourse data show that (surface) order is most insightfully accounted for by strong pragmatic principles. Information preceding the verb is either pragmatically marked, or is information for which the hearer is instructed to 'open a new active discourse file'. Other information follows the verb. Syntactic role correlates highly with the discourse-pragmatic and semantic status of the information encoded, but has almost no correlation with order. Therefore, in terms of the typological tradition represented by J. Greenberg, J. Hawkins, and others, no particular order of syntactic roles should be taken as basic. Rather, languages in which order is not based on syntactic role should simply not be forced into an order typology based on syntactic role.*