2013 Volume 143 Pages 81-95
Kaqchikel, one of the Mayan languages, is recognized as having the Verb-Object-Subject (VOS) order as its basic word order, similar to many of the other Mayan languages. In reality, however, the SVO word order is more frequently used than VOS, which comes in second by comparison. For this reason, Kaqchikel is often referred to as a language that is possibly shifting, or has already shifted, from a VOS to an SVO structure. We conducted a sentence processing experiment using Kaqchikel transitive sentences to verify whether the syntactically basic word order of Kaqchikel is VOS or SVO. The resulting data support a traditional analysis in which Kaqchikel’s syntactically basic word order is VOS, even for current native Kaqchikel speakers. That is, if indeed a part of the modern Kaqchikel community is currently shifting from VOS to SVO, this shift has not yet been reflected in the internal grammar of the majority of the native Kaqchikel speakers.
