Sandhya Narayanan will speak on "Verb Placement and Word Order Variation in Quechua: Preliminary Investigations."

This presentation will present some preliminary investigations in the distribution of verb placement and word order variation in Puno Quechua. This investigation is part of a larger project looking at contact induced effect of long-term Quechua-Aymara contact in Puno, Peru, focusing primarily on the variations and changes that have affected word order, and more specifically, location of the verb in Quechua and Aymara sentences. My analysis departs from prior studies on word order in Quechua (and eventually) by focusing primarily on naturally occurring data that has come from public uses of Quechua in political and media domains. From my preliminary investigations, I will present a typology of sentential and clausal verb placement in Quechua. Based on this typology, I will also set the stage for the theoretical questions that will guide the remainder of my investigation into verb placement in Aymara, and help track potential contact-induced changes in word order that are a result of long term Quechua-Aymara contact.