{"doi":"10.1353/lan.2018.0017","title":"Deriving verb-initial word order in Mayan","abstract":"<jats:p>\n                    Individual languages in the Mayan family display either rigid VSO or alternating VOS/VSO word orders (England 1991). In this article we review problems with previous accounts of Mayan word order and argue that verb-initial (V1) order is consistently derived by head movement of the verb to a position above the subject and below Infl\n                    <jats:sup>0</jats:sup>\n                    , which accounts for uniformity in verb-stem formation across the family. After an in-depth examination of the factors that have been reported to determine postverbal argument order, we present three distinct paths to VOS: (i) postsyntactic reordering of NP objects (following Clemens 2014, 2017), (ii) right-side subject topicalization (Can Pixabaj 2004, Curiel 2007), and (iii) heavy-NP shift (Larsen 1988). This account makes testable predictions in the domains of word order and prosodic constituency and has implications for the derivation of verb-initial order crosslinguistically.\n                  </jats:p>","journal":"Language","year":2018,"id":638747,"datarank":0.6329261557764161,"base_score":4.219507705176107,"endowment":4.219507705176107,"self_citation_contribution":0.6329261557764161,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.6329261557764161,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":67,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":null,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":false,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":null,"fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1659229,"name":"Jessica Coon","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1659228,"name":"Lauren Clemens","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":false}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":{"has_enrichment":true,"resolved":true,"title":"Deriving verb-initial word order in Mayan","abstract":"<jats:p>\n                    Individual languages in the Mayan family display either rigid VSO or alternating VOS/VSO word orders (England 1991). In this article we review problems with previous accounts of Mayan word order and argue that verb-initial (V1) order is consistently derived by head movement of the verb to a position above the subject and below Infl\n                    <jats:sup>0</jats:sup>\n                    , which accounts for uniformity in verb-stem formation across the family. After an in-depth examination of the factors that have been reported to determine postverbal argument order, we present three distinct paths to VOS: (i) postsyntactic reordering of NP objects (following Clemens 2014, 2017), (ii) right-side subject topicalization (Can Pixabaj 2004, Curiel 2007), and (iii) heavy-NP shift (Larsen 1988). This account makes testable predictions in the domains of word order and prosodic constituency and has implications for the derivation of verb-initial order crosslinguistically.\n                  </jats:p>","is_dataset_classified":null,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"views":0,"has_version_chain":false,"is_dataset":false,"is_oa":false,"pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"openalex_id":null,"authors":[],"funders":[],"total_grants":0,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"citation_trend":[],"oa_status":"closed","license":"https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms","oa_locations":[{"url":"https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0097850718000838","host_type":"publisher"}],"fields_of_study":[],"mesh_terms":[],"keywords":[],"sdg_mappings":[],"linked_datasets":[],"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"database_accessions":[],"source":"live","citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-08-06T21:21:48.749065Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}