{"title":"Orden De Constituyentes Determinado Por La Estructura Comunicativa De La Cláusula:El Totonaco De Tuxtla","authors":"Paulette Levy, Teodoro Juárez Esteban","doi":"10.1086/730300","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In the grammar of Tuxtla Totonac (TTu), constituent order is not used to codify syntactic relations like Subject or Object. Our analysis shows that the order of constituents in the clause in TTu is rigidly governed by the thematic relations in the communicative structure of sentences. For all configurations of S, V, O, Rheme (the portion of the clause corresponding to what the speaker wants their interlocutor to know) always precedes Theme (the portion of the clause that expresses what the clause is about). The analysis also shows that in the construction of discourse, each of the four nominal positions of the TTu sentence template serves a different communicative purpose. The results show that it is methodologically fruitful to separate the study of information structure at the level of the clause (Rheme/Theme) from the structuring of information at the level of discourse (Topic).","PeriodicalId":46577,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of American Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Journal of American Linguistics","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1086/730300","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"N/A","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In the grammar of Tuxtla Totonac (TTu), constituent order is not used to codify syntactic relations like Subject or Object. Our analysis shows that the order of constituents in the clause in TTu is rigidly governed by the thematic relations in the communicative structure of sentences. For all configurations of S, V, O, Rheme (the portion of the clause corresponding to what the speaker wants their interlocutor to know) always precedes Theme (the portion of the clause that expresses what the clause is about). The analysis also shows that in the construction of discourse, each of the four nominal positions of the TTu sentence template serves a different communicative purpose. The results show that it is methodologically fruitful to separate the study of information structure at the level of the clause (Rheme/Theme) from the structuring of information at the level of discourse (Topic).
期刊介绍:
International Journal of American Linguistics is a world forum for the study of all the languages native to North, Central, and South America. Inaugurated by Franz Boas in 1917, IJAL concentrates on the investigation of linguistic data and on the presentation of grammatical fragments and other documents relevant to Amerindian languages.