Open Journal of Modern Linguistics
2013. Vol.3, No.3, 203-207
Published Online September 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojml)

DOI:10.4236/ojml.2013.33027

Effect of Animacy on Word Order Processing in Kaqchikel Maya
Sachiko Kiyama1, Katsuo Tamaoka2, Jungho Kim3, Masatoshi Koizumi3
1

Functional Brain Imaging Lab, National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, Ohbu, Japan
2
Graduate School of Languages and Cultures, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
3
Graduate School of Arts and Letters, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan
Email: koizumi@sal.tohoku.ac.jp
Received June 24th, 2013; revised July 24th, 2013; accepted July 31st, 2013

Copyright © 2013 Sachiko Kiyama et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons
Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided theoriginal work is properly cited.

This study investigated the processing load of transitive sentences in two different basic word orders (i.e.,
VOS and SVO) in Kaqchikel Maya, with a particular focus on the animacy of the object. The results of asentence plausibility judgment task showed that VOS sentences were processed faster than SVO sentences regardless of the animacy of the object. This supports the traditional analysis in Mayan linguistics
that, although SVO is the most frequently used word order, the syntactically determined basic word orderis VOS in Kaqchikel, as in many other Mayan languages. More importantly, the results suggest that theprocessing load in Kaqchikel sentence comprehension is more strongly affected by syntactic canonicity
than production frequency or object animacy.
Keywords: Animacy; Sentence Processing; SO Word Order Preference; Syntax; Kaqchikel

Introduction
According to experimental findings from languages such as
Basque, English, Finnish, German, and Japanese, sentences inwhich the subject (S) precedes the object (O) (SO word order =SOV, SVO, VSO) induce a lower processing load for comprehension than those in which the opposite occurs (OS word order = OSV, OVS, VOS), and thus, they are preferred by speakers (Bader & Meng, 1999; Erdocia et al., 2009; Kaiser &Trueswell, 2004; Mazuka, Itoh, & Kondo, 2002; Sekerina, 1997;
Tamaoka et al., 2005; Tamaoka et al., 2013; among many others). However, these previous studies on sentence processing
have all targeted languages in which the subject precedes theobject in syntactically basic word orders (i.e., SO languages).
Hence, it remains unclear whether the preference for SO is areflection of word order in individual languages or more universal human cognitive features. What we refer to as individual
grammar theory in this paper posits that a language’s syntactically determined basic word order has a low processing load incomparison with other possible word orders (e.g., Gibson, 2000),
whereas what may be referred to as universal cognition theory
hypothesizes that SO word order has a low processing load
regardless of the basic word order of any individual language(e.g., Bock & Warren, 1985). To verify which of these two theories is correct, it is necessary to examine languages in which
the object precedes the subject in syntactically basic word orders(i.e., OS languages), for which the two theories develop different predictions.
Koizumi et al. (under review) conducted a sentence-processing experiment in Kaqchikel, a Mayan language spoken in
Guatemala. The syntactically determined basic word order of
Kaqchikel is VOS, although in general, word order is relatively
flexible (García Matzar & Rodríguez Guaján, 1997: p. 333).

Copyright © 2013 SciRes.

They found that VOS was processed faster than the two othercommonly used word orders, VSO and SVO. This suggests thatthe preference for SO in sentence comprehension is not universal; rather, syntactic features of individual languages significantly influence sentence processing load. In other words, theindividual grammar theory, rather than the universal cognition
theory, was supported.
It is interesting to note at this point that the production frequency of SVO is higher than that of VOS in Kaqchikel: SVO(74.4%) vs. VOS (24.2%), according to Kubo et al. (2012). The
production frequency factor, therefore, should facilitate the processing of SVO compared to VOS. The syntactic complexityand frequency of usage presumably work in the opposite direction: the syntax favors VOS, whereas the frequency favors SVO.
The former overwhelms the latter, resulting in the lower processing load of VOS. A confounding factor here has to do withthe animacy of the object. In Kaqchikel, SVO order is more frequently used when the object denotes an animate entity such asa human, compared to when the object is inanimate: SVO(87.1%) vs. VOS (12.9%) with animate objects; SVO (60.9%)
vs. VOS (39.1%) with inanimate objects (Kubo et al., 2012).
The target sentences used in Koizumi et al.’s (under review)experiment all have an object denoting an inanimate entity suchas a book. Thus, it is possible that VOS was processed fasterthan SVO in their experiment because they used sentences withinanimate objects, for which the difference between VOS and
SVO, in terms of production frequency, is relatively small. In
other words, SVO sentences might be processed faster than
VOS sentences if the object is animate, in which case the difference in production frequency between VOS and SVO is muchgreater. To test if this is indeed the case, we conducted an auditorily presented sentence plausibility judgment task (e.g., Caplan, Chen, & Waters, 2008).

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Kaqchikel
Kaqchikel is 1 of the 21 Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala. It is mainly used in the highlands west of Guatemala City,
the capital. With over 450,000 speakers, it is one of the principal Mayan languages along with K’iche’, Q’eqchi’, and Mam(Brown, Maxwell, & Little, 2006: p. 2; Lewis, 2009; Tay Coyoy, 1996: p. 55).
Like other Mayan languages, Kaqchikel is head marking:subjects and objects are unmarked, and person and number
agreement for both subjects and objects are obligatorily expressed on the verb. Kaqchikel is ergative, like other Mayan
languages. In Mayan linguistics, ergative agreement markers(i.e., those that indicate the subject of a transitive verb) are called Set A, and absolutive agreement markers (which indicate
either the subject of an intransitive verb or object of a transitiveverb) are known as Set B. The order of morphemes in the verb
is [Aspect-B-A-Verb stem]1. An example is given in 1) below.
1) Y-e’-in-to’
IC-B3PL-A1SG-help“I help them.”

Since Kaqchikel is a pro-drop language, 1) functions as both
independent speech and an independent sentence.
Like its ancestor language, Kaqchikel’s syntactically determined basic word order is VOS, but SVO and VSO are also
possible (Rodríguez Guaján, 1994: p. 200; García Matzar & Rodríguez Guaján, 1997: p. 333; Tichoc Cumes et al., 2000: p.
195; Ajsivinac Sian et al., 2004: p. 162). According to England(1991), these word orders are derived from VOS through reordering rules, as schematically shown in 2)2.
2) OrderVOS

Derivation
[VOS]

VSO

[[V

SVO

[REORDERED S [VOS] REORDERED O]]]

Aissen (1992) has proposed more elaborate syntactic structures for Mayan sentences with these word orders, but her
analysis agrees with England’s in that VSO and SVO word
orders are associated with more complex syntactic structures
than VOS word order (see also Coon, 2010; Preminger, 2011).
Given this feature, the following predictions can be madeabout processing load in the comprehension of Kaqchikel sentences: if the preference for SO word order shown by speakers
of SO languages is mainly caused by the syntactic structure of
the individual language, as suggested by the individual grammar theory, VOS sentences should have a lower processing
load than VSO or SVO sentences in Kaqchikel. On the other
hand, if SO triggers a lower processing load than OS regardlessof the basic word order of the individual grammar, as suggested
1

The following abbreviations are used in this paper. IC [Incompletive], CP[completive], A [Set A ergative], B [Set B absolutive], 3 [third person], SG[singular], PL [plural], DET [determiner], PM [plural marker for nouns].
2
All six word orders that are logically possible are indeed allowed in manyof the Mayan languages, including Kaqchikel (England, 1991; García Matzar& Rodríguez Guaján, 1997: p. 333). SVO in particular is most frequently
used. It has been suggested that this is due to the influence of Spanish(Maxwell & Little, 2006), but the fact that all six word orders, including
SVO, appear in 16th-century Kaqchikel texts shows that SVO was used before the language had contact with Spanish (Rodríguez Guaján, 1989 quoted
in England, 1991; García Matzar & Rodríguez Guaján, 1997: p. 334).

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by the universal cognition theory, then Kaqchikel VOS sentences should create a greater processing load than the othertwo word orders. Koizumi et al. (under review) conducted asentence-processing experiment to test these predictions. The
results of the experiment revealed that for Kaqchikel speakers,
the processing load of VOS is lower than that of the two othercommonly used word orders, VSO and SVO.
As mentioned in the previous section, however, the production frequency of SVO is higher than that of VOS in Kaqchikel.
Furthermore, SVO order is more frequently produced when theobject denotes an animate entity such as a human, compared towhen the object is inanimate: SVO (87.1%) vs. VOS (12.9%)
with animate objects; SVO (60.9%) vs. VOS (39.1%) with inanimate objects (Kubo et al., 2012). The target sentences used in
Koizumi et al.’s (under review) experiment all have an inanimate object. Thus, it is possible that VOS was processed fasterthan SVO in their experiment because they used sentences withinanimate objects, for which the difference between VOS and
SVO, in terms of production frequency, is relatively small. In
other words, SVO sentences might be processed faster than
VOS sentences if the object is animate, in which case the difference in production frequency between VOS and SVO ismuch greater. To test this idea, this study conducted a sentenceplausibility judgment task to evaluate the effect of object animacy on sentence processing load in Kaqchikel Maya.

MethodParticipants
A total of 53 Kaqchikel native speakers who live in Guatemala (28 males; mean age ± SD = 34.7 years ± 10.6) gave theirwritten, informed consent to participate in the research. Because of considerable dialectal and idiolectal variation among
Kaqchikel speakers, the data of participants who had less than
80% accuracy in the experiment were excluded, leaving thedata of 24 participants in the final analysis.

Materials
Semantically natural, grammatical transitive sentences werearranged into each of the two word orders (VOS and SVO), as
shown in 3). Eighty pairs, for 160 target sentences, were created in this way. Forty pairs of sentences among the 80 pairs
had an animate object, and the remaining 40 pairs had an inanimate object. The subject was always animate.
3) a. [VOS]
X-e-ru-pïs

ri

taq

lej

ri

ch’utitata’

CP-B3PL-A3SG-wrap

DET

PM

tortilla

DET

uncle

“The uncle wrapped the tortillas.”b. [SVO]Ri
DETch’utitata’ X-e-ru-pïs
uncle

CP-B3PL-A3SG-wrap

ri

taq

DET

PM tortillalej

Among the 80 sentence pairs, the number of letters did not
differ significantly between subjects (M = 10.2 letters, SD = 2.0
letters) and objects (M = 9.7 letters, SD = 2.0 letters) (t79 = 1.61,
p = .11, ns.). Representative examples along with their English
translations are shown in the Appendix.
Additionally, 40 transitive sentences that were grammaticalbut not semantically natural were arranged in each of the two
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S. KIYAMA

word orders. They were semantically implausible mostly because of selectional restriction violations (e.g., #Xuch’äj ri
kaq’ïq’ ri xta Selfa “Miss Selfa washed the air”). All 120 sentence pairs, consisting of 240 sentences, were counterbalanced
and then categorized into two groups according to word order.
Further, 192 filler sentences were added to each group. All thestimulus sentences were recorded by a male native Kaqchikel
speaker and saved as WAV sound files.
The duration of each of the recorded semantically plausible
sentences was trimmed in Praat ver. 5.1.31 (Boersma, 2001) toreduce the difference between the VOS and SVO sentences
within each pair as much as possible. The trimming was doneby slightly shortening the duration of some pauses between
phrases. The difference between the duration of VOS sentences(M = 3274 ms, SD = 299) and that of SVO sentences (M = 3274
ms, SD = 299) was not significant (t79 = .130, p = .897, ns.). All
the trimmed sentences were judged as natural in terms of prosody by our native Kaqchikel consultants.

Procedure
The participants listened to the stimulus sentences in a random order through headphones. They were asked to judge whether
each sentence was semantically plausible and to answer bypushing a YES button (correct sentence) or NO button (incurrect sentence), as quickly and accurately as possible. The timefrom the beginning of each stimulus sentence until the buttonpressing was recorded as the reaction time. E-Prime ver. 2.0(Psychology Software Tools) was used for presenting the stimuli and obtaining the behavioral data.

AnalysisAmong the 80 pairs of semantically plausible sentences, only
items that were correctly judged by each participant were analyzed. Reaction times ranged from 1223 ms to 7635 ms, and allof them were within 2.5 standard deviations at both the highand low ranges from the individual mean of each participant ineach category. Statistical analyses were conducted using a linear mixed effects (LME) model (e.g., Baayen, 2008) based on
the restricted maximum-likelihood method (REML), which estimates the effects of fixed variables that are of interest in the
study over random effects that can be assumed as being randomly sampled from the population. In this study, we assumed
the word order of sentences (i.e., VOS vs. SVO) and animacyof the object (i.e., animate vs. inanimate) as fixed variables, andparticipant and item (i.e., stimulus sentence) as random variables. PASW ver. 18.0J (SPSS, Inc., 2008) was used to conduct
the analysis.

Results
Table 1 shows the means and standard deviations of accuracy rates for the 80 sets of semantically plausible transitive
sentences in the VOS and SVO word orders with animate andinanimate objects. The LME analysis indicated that both fixed
effects of the word order (F1, 936 = .354, p = .552, ns.) and object animacy (F1, 1032 = 1.690, p = .194, ns.) were not significant.
The interaction effect of the two variables was not significant
either (F1, 933 = .174, p = .677, ns.).
Table 2 shows the means and standard deviations of reaction
times for the correctly judged semantically plausible target
sentences. The same analysis revealed that the fixed effect of
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Talbe 1.
Accuracy rates (%) of sentence plausibility judgment for Kaqchikel
VOS and SVO sentences with animate and inanimate objects.
Animate object

Inaminate object

M (%)

SD (%)M (%)

SD (%)

VOS

79.6

40.4

81.7

38.8

VOS

77.1

42.1

81.3

39.1

Talbe 2.
Reaction times (ms) of sentence plausibility judgment for Kaqchikel
VOS and SVO sentences with animate and inanimate objects.
Animate object

Inaminate object

M (ms)SD (ms)M (ms)SD (ms)

VOS

3856

597

3839

715

SVO

3911

585

3964

706

word order was significant (F1, 741 = 4.983, p < .05). The fixed
effect of object animacy (F1, 741 = .040, p = .842, ns.) and theinteraction effect of the two variables (F1, 740 = .692, p = .406,
ns.) were not significant. The results indicated that the difference of reaction times (91 ms) between VOS sentences (M =3847 ms, SD = 658 ms) and SVO sentences (M = 3938 ms, SD= 650 ms) was significant, regardless of the object animacy.

Discussion
In order to explore the processing load of transitive sentencesin two commonly used word orders (i.e., VOS and SVO) in
Kaqchikel Maya with reference to the animacy of the object,
this study conducted an experiment with a sentence plausibility
judgment task. The results of the LME analysis showed that
VOS was processed faster than SVO regardless of the animacyof the object. That is, although SVO is more frequently produced when the object is animate compared to when the object
is inanimate, the sentence processing load is not significantly
affected by this difference. Rather, syntactic features play amore prominent role in sentence processing, a conclusion consistent with the individual grammar theory.
A question naturally arises as to why SVO is more frequently
used when the object is animate compared to when it is inanimate, even though the animacy of the object does not affect theprocessing load3. We suggest that this is because the choice of
SO vs. OS order in sentence production is primarily determinedby conceptual factors at earlier stages of sentence production(Bock et al., 1985; Tanaka et al., 2011) without regard to theoverall computational load, which is also strongly affected byprocesses in subsequent stages such as the construction of syntactic structures. In particular, we agree with Kubo et al. (2012)that similarity-based competition is the key factor here.
Gennari et al. (2012) argues that when there is a temporal
overlap in the planning of two conceptually similar nouns, thesimilarity leads to interference between the semantic information of the nouns. As a result, when the concept of one noun isactivated, the concept of the other noun is inhibited, and thelatter noun is mentioned away from the initially activated noun,or simply omitted in the sentence. Moreover, the effect of con3

This question is related to but different from the question of why SVO ismore frequently used than VOS, the syntactically basic word order, in
Kaqchikel. For a discussion of the latter, see Koizumi et al. (under review).

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ceptual similarity interacts with language-specific grammaticalconstraints, and the actual instantiation may vary across languages. Kubo et al. (2012) examined how similarity-based
competition influences speakers’ choices of sentence patterns in
Kaqchikel. The production of VOS sentences is interesting because the most accessible element, an animate agent noun usually realized as the subject, must be retained in memory until
the end of the sentence, and hence, it potentially competes withother elements. If similarity-based competition arises between
the subject and object in Kaqchikel, one of them must be realized away from the other. Since the object usually follows theverb in Kaqchikel, the increase of competition would lead tothe decrease of VOS word order. Kubo et al. conducted two
picture description experiments to verify this prediction. In thefirst experiment, the animacy of the patient noun was manipulated (human, animal, inanimate object) such that similarity between the agent (human) and patient varied among conditions.
The results showed that VOS sentences were produced more
often with an inanimate patient than with an animal or humanpatient, as predicted by similarity-based competition. In the second experiment, the researchers examined the effect of an agreement morpheme on the verb by changing the number of theobject noun. The results replicated the overall patterns of thefirst experiment. That is, VOS sentences were produced more
often with an inanimate patient than with a human patient, evenwhen the number of the subject was different from the numberof the object. This indicates that ambiguity resolution is not themost influential factor of the choice of sentence pattern in
Kaqchikel. Putting the results together, native Kaqchikel speakers seem to be sensitive to the competition caused by the similarity of noun concepts involved in an event described in thesentence. Native Kaqchikel speakers select the sentence patternin order to resolve competition between nouns with similar
concepts.

Conclusion
In Kaqchikel Maya, VOS word order is more frequently employed when the object is inanimate than when it is animate.
The results of the listening comprehension experiment reported
here show that VOS is processed faster than SVO regardless of
the animacy of the object. This suggests that the processing
load is not significantly affected by the animacy of the object in
Kaqchikel.

Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Yoshiho Yasugi, Juan Esteban Ajsivinac
Sian, and Lolmay Pedro Oscar García Mátzar for their invaluable support for our research in Guatemala. We would also liketo thank the research participants. The work for the present
article was partially supported by the Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science under Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S) (No. 22222001, PI: Masatoshi Koizumi).

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Appendix3) Sentences with a plural animate object and a singular animate subject:

The followings are representative examples excerpted fromthe 80 semantically natural, grammatical transitive Kaqchikel
sentences (target stimuli) and their English translations. They
are presented in the word order of VOS in this Appendix.
1) Sentences with a plural inanimate object and a singularanimate subject:a) X-e-ru-pïs
CP-B3PL-A3SG-wraprich’utitata’

DET

uncle

ri

taq

lej

DET

PM

tortillaa) X-e-ru-kajij
CP-B3PL-A3SG-annoyricholonel.

DET

speakerritaq

yuqüy b’aq

DET

PM

bone-setter

ri

taq

rach’alal

DET

PMfamily“The speaker annoyed the bone-setters.”b) X-e-ru-q’etej
CP-B3PL-A3SG-embraceri

b’iyinel

DET

walker“The walker embraced the families.”“The uncle wrapped the tortillas.”b) X-e-ru-nïm
CP-B3PL-A3SG-push
ri

ri

taq

wuj

DET

PM

book

malka’n.

DET

widow

ri

taq

ajawa’.

DET

PM

man

ri achijilom

ri taq ixjayilom

DET husband

DET PM wife

“The wives saved the husband.”b) X--ki-k’uxlaj

2) Sentences with a singular inanimate object and a plural
animate subject:
CP-B3SG-A3PL-breatha) X--ki-köl
CP-B3SG-A3PL-save“The widow pushed the books.”a) X--ki-jiq’aj

4) Sentences with a singular animate object and a plural animate subject:rijub’ülpom

DETfragrant

incenseCP-B3SG-A3PL-recall
ritaq

rijitaq

DET

PM

elderlyri

kib’aluk

DET

brother-in-law“The elderlies recalled the brother-in-law.”“The men breathed the fragrant incense.”b) X--ki-chäq
CP-B3SG-A3PL-grindritaq

atita’

DET

PM

grandmother

ri

chäq’

tz’o’

DET

matureboiled corn

“The grandmothers grinded the mature boiled corn.”

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