Festschrifts

Ch’ol is a Mayan language with verb-initial order and preverbal topic and focus positions (Vázquez Álvarez 2011; Clemens & Coon 2018). This paper presents the results of a systematic investigation of Ch’ol word order across various focus environments, including (i) broad focus, (ii) subject focus, (iii) object focus, (iv) contrastive subject focus, and (v) contrastive object focus. We analyze semi-spontaneous responses to questions designed to elicit these focus types from 31 Ch’ol speakers. Both verb-initial and subject-initial clauses are present across five focus conditions, revealing a more nuanced relationship between information structure and word order than previously reported. We also find that while contrastive focus is predominantly marked via fronting of the focused constituent, more variation is found with information focus, and fronting is found to be nonobligatory in every focus condition.