Non-discourse-configurationality in Imbabura Kichwa

Abstract

This study investigates the syntactic structure of Imbabura Kichwa, a Quechuan language spoken in the Imbabura Province of Ecuador, with a focus on the seemingly free word order in grammatical functions and discourse-semantic functions (i.e., topic and focus). We first provide the data and overviews of the non-configurationality and non-discourse-configurationality of Imbabura Kichwa. Then, we demonstrate that the underlying syntactic structure of Imbabura Kichwa is built up hierarchically based on the agreement of focus enclitics with clause types and polarity. Finally, we argue that the non-configurationality and non-discourse-configurationality are the surface realization of the movement from the underlying structure to the daughter positions of a non-projective category S.