traditionally linguists do not consider word order to be a part of inflectional category but here we have this cool language doing its own cool thing and disproving those snobby eurocentric linguists!

in iquito, they have this tense called 'extended current tense' where the time window is from 6am in the morning and 6am in the morning the next day. so how do they know which one has happened and which one has not if the tense is the same for today and tomorrow? well, they use irreals moods for things that hasn't happened (i.e. future but includes optative and desirative things), and the realis mood is used for things that have already happened.

why is this language so cool and why am i talking about irrealis and realis? WELL, in iquito, the realis mood is expressed in the SVX order, but when the speakers are using the irrealis mood they use the SXV word order! how cool is that?

and the SXV word order is not caused by something like topicalization and focusing! it literally just expresses the irrealis mood!

and the words that can go in the X position is just so??? wow/????how to??categorize??

NPs can and do fill the X position, but we can't really generalize and say that X is a determiner phrase because adverbs and pospositional phrases, and negation words can fill the place as well (say whaaaaat). We can't really say it's the smallest constituent that follows the verb, because a determiner by itself can be separated to fill the X position, but it is not really a constituent. But when adjectives occur with nouns they stick together and both move to the X position?!! wow!!

so in iquito the reality status would be expressed like this:

I the hit man (irrealis)

i hit the man (realis)

i big fish love (irrealis)

i love big fish (realis)

i tomorrow eat (irrealis)

i eat yesterday (realis)

i iquitos=location go (irrealis)

i go iquitos=location (realis)

*i big love fish

*i the man hit

*i eat tomorrow (to express irrealis mood)

the reason for the determiner being separated from the noun while the adjective goes with the noun? well here's another fun fact about iquito! the grammaticalization of determiners from demonstrative pronouns have not been completed yet, so the relationship between the noun and the determiner is still loose.

what about intransitive verbs, you say?? when we have an intransitive verb, usually the sentence involving that verb becomes ambiguous, but in cases where phonological elements fit together perfectly and we have a central close unrounded vowel (ɨ) and two front close unrounded vowels (ii) then vowel hiatus becomes a thing that distinguishes the realis/irrealis mood!! what even!!!!

i think we could go and say that there is a null irrealis between the subject and the verb, so when we have a irrealis situation then the null irrealis becomes activated?? because vowel hiatus shows that in realis mood the vowels get resolved but in irrealis mood the vowel does not get resolved! this might mean that there once was something between the subject and the verb that stopped the vowels from being resolved, and in cases of transitive verbs, the immediate element that follows the verb got pulled from its position to fill the place of the thing??

this language is 2 kool 4 the world but it's so sad that it's EGIDS level is 8a moribund D: hey people this cool language is dying and there are so many other language that are dying???? there are 7106 languages in the world and we're losing so many of them in such a short time span send hELP!!????