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Information Structuring in Papago Narrative Discourse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Doris E. Payne
Doris E. Payne*
Affiliation:
Summer Institute of Linguistics and University of Oregon
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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.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 63 , Issue 4 , December 1987 , pp. 783 - 804
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 Linguistic Society of America

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Ethelene Rosero and Dean Saxton, who have generously helped me learn something about Pima and Papago. In addition, William Bright, Wallace Chafe, Scott DeLancey, John Du Bois, Kenneth Hale, Talmy Givón, Pamela Munro, Tom Payne, and Sandra Thompson have given helpful comments on a previous version of this paper. Much appreciation goes to Nonie Holtz for consultation on the statistical analyses.

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