Word-order and argument-marking: Japanese vs Chinese vs Naxi

It is argued that varying word-order is related not to the marking on the arguments indicating their grammatical relations but to the syntax of object. The flexible word-order in Japanese and the lack thereof in Chinese may be attributed to the presence or absence of argument-marking, but evidence from Naxi shows that although argument-marking may help identify the semantic roles of the arguments from the processing point of view, it is syntax that decides the word-order. To the extent that the relative positioning of the object and adverbs cannot be reduced to argument-marking, the mechanism allowing movement of the object past the verb from a universal order derives both the verb-final property and the varying word-order. Insofar as there is no independent motivation for a morphological constraint on movement, certain cases of interpretive ambiguity as a result of lack of argument-marking are best explained by processing difficulty.