Verb-initial word order to derive the structures of verb-initial languages from underlyingly SVO structures, functional linguists would look at how cognitive principles make it possible for languages to have different word orders and why certain word orders are more common, less common, or almost non-existent. Russell Tomlin (in his 1986 paper "Basic word order. Functional principles") argued that there are three cognitively grounded principles which can account for the observed distributions of the frequencies of word order in human languages. The three principles are: Since subjects are generally more likely than objects to be topics and to have animate referents, the topic-first principle
Ahtna language Athabaskan Dictionary." Because of the different Ahtna dialects, people may say the same words differently. Possession is indicated by prefixes. s- 'my', u- or yu'- 'his/her', ne- 'our'; as in snaan 'my mother', unaan (or yu'naan) 'his/her mother', nenaan 'our mother'. Verbs are primarily prefixing. There are often six or more prefixes before the stem and then one or more suffixes. (1a) displays a surface form in Ahtna spelling while (1b) is the verb theme. Three prefixes are present that have to be listed with the stem to make up the form. Anything adjacent in a verb theme can be