The interaction between topicalization and structural constraints: Evidence from Yucatec Maya

It has been cross-linguistically observed that topics occur sentence initially (see Vallduví 1992, Lambrecht 1994, Neeleman and Van De Koot 2008). It has also been shown that this generalization is functionally motivated: topics indicate the address in the common ground to which the asserted information is related, and it is an advantage for the hearer if this information is introduced early in the utterance (Clark and Clark 1977; Clark and Haviland 1977). This rationale motivates the linear precedence of topic constituents without referring to particular positions in constituent structure. In line with this generalization, recent research on the discourse configurationality of constituent structure has shown that many languages display a syntactic position that is reserved for topics and this position is typically at the beginning of the sentence (see, e.g., the syntactic analysis