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A Grammar of Kakataibo
... According to Zariquiey (2011Zariquiey ( , 2018, seven Kashibo-Kakataibo suffixes, occupying three different slots in the verb, have tense as (part of) their basic meaning and cannot co-occur with another tense marker. These suffixes code varying degrees of temporal distance in the past and generally trigger a certain aspectual interpretation. ...
... These suffixes code varying degrees of temporal distance in the past and generally trigger a certain aspectual interpretation. Zariquiey (2011Zariquiey ( , 2018 does not report any future tense morpheme. ...
ABSTRACT: Beyond simply indicating future or past tense, the languages of the Pano family grammatically distinguish various degrees of temporal distance relative to a reference point, typically the moment of utterance; i.e., they possess what has been called ‘metrical tense’ (Chung & Timberlake 1985;Frawley 1992), ‘degrees of remoteness’ (Comrie 1985;Dahl 1985;Bybee et al.1994;Botne 2012), or ‘graded tense’(Cable 2013). This article offers a comparative analysis of the rich graded tense systems found in Pano, concentrating on morphologically expressed categories. In so doing, it seeks to expand our typological knowledge of languages exhibiting this feature,particularly in regards the internal organization of the systems, interactions between the graded tense markers and other grammatical categories (aspect, modality, evidentiality, negation, and number), and the probable sources of the graded tense markers.Despite being one of the largest genetic clusters with elaborate graded tense systems in the world, Pano languages have not been given (much) attention in crosslinguistic treatments of this feature.KEYWORDS: Pano/Panoan languages; Tense morphology; Graded/Metrical tense; Interactions of tense with TAME, negation and plurality
... Its speakers live in the departments of Huánuco and Ucayali. According to the last census of Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática (2017), 1553 people identified themselves as Kakataibo speakers; however, FENACOKA, the Native Federation of Kakataibo Communities, estimated 3500 Kakataibo around 2007 (Zariquiey, 2018). Regarding the dialectological distribution of the language, Zariquiey (2011b) proposed five dialects grouped into two main branches: Lower Aguaytía, Upper Aguaytía, Sungaroyacu, San Alejandro and Nokamán †. ...
... Table 1 and Table 2 summarize the phoneme inventory of the Lower Aguaytía variety (orthographic conventions are included in brackets). With regards to its syntax, following Zariquiey (2018), Kakataibo is a postpositional and agglutinating language that shows high levels of synthetic verbal morphology. Word order is pragmatically oriented; however, verb-final sentences are the usual. ...
In the present article, I propose some initial topics for the typological-comparative study of semantic parallelism, which also serve as an analytical axis to study semantic parallelism in traditional kakataibo chants. These basic topics are the structure of the cotext, lexical and grammatical type of parallel units, type of semantic relations between parallel units, number of parallel units per pair of lines, and associated phenomena such as recurrent or fixed pairing and diphrasism. Following this initial proposal, I postulate that the cotext in Kakataibo semantic parallelism is a repeated morphosyntactic structure that does not exhibit ellipsis or increasing, the number of parallel units can be one to three slots and one pair is more productive, parallel units are related by semantic fields such as kinship terms and colors. Furthermore, I analyze the interaction of semantic parallelism in the continuous creation of lines with two other poetic forms, enjambment and repetition, and I postulate that semantic parallelism is a compositional strategy due to its high productivity for line composing.
... An initial starting point would be to assume a notion of word that makes it as close as possible structurally to that constituent which is assumed to be a word in closely-related languages. The morphosyntactic word in Pano languages is typically described as necessarily containing a single verb root with one or more obligatory inflectional elements (depending on the language), which encode tense, aspect or clause-type (Fleck 2003;Neely 2019;Valenzuela 2003;Zariquiey 2018). Pano languages are also described as '(poly)synthetic' because there are a large number of bound morphemes that can occur between the verb root and the obligatorily inflectional element which are assumed on all accounts to be 'affixes'. ...
There are languages in which the irrealis domain is split up into situations that may potentially occur and counterfactual situations. In these languages, one marker is only used for expressing potential situations (weak irrealis) and another marker is only used for expressing counterfactual situations (strong irrealis). Moreover, there are languages that only have either weak or strong irrealis markers. For languages containing both weak and strong irrealis markers, it has been demonstrated that the use of weak irrealis markers in counterfactual conditionals is blocked by strong irrealis markers. Based on a sample of 51 languages, the present study lends support to this theoretical claim. However, it is also shown that there are other blocking effects. First, there are languages in which the use of strong irrealis markers in counterfactual conditionals is blocked by specialized clause-linking devices (e.g., devices only used for expressing counterfactual conditional relations). Second, for languages that only contain weak irrealis markers, it is shown that the use of weak irrealis markers in counterfactual conditionals is blocked by a specialized clause-linking device. The paper further investigates whether the results obtained for counterfactual conditionals can be generalized to other counterfactual constructions.
Studies on individual Amazonian languages have shown that these languages can contribute to informing and refining our theories of counterfactual conditional constructions. Still missing, however, is an attempt at exploring this complex sentence construction across different genetic units of the Amazonia in a single study. The paper explores counterfactual conditionals in a sample of 24 Amazonian languages. Special attention is paid to the range of TAM markers and clause-linking devices used in counterfactual conditionals in the Amazonian languages in the sample. As for TAM markers, it is shown that protases tend to be unmarked (they do not occur with any TAM values), and apodoses tend to occur with irrealis or frustrative marking. As for clause-linking devices, it is shown that most Amazonian languages in the sample contain counterfactual conditionals occurring with non-specialized clause-linking devices. This means that the distinction between counterfactual conditionals and other types of conditionals (e.g., real/generic) is not grammaticalized in clause-linking devices. Instead, the counterfactual conditional meaning resides in the combination of specific TAM markers. The paper also pays close attention to the distribution of TAM markers and clause-linking devices in counterfactual conditional constructions in the Vaupés. In particular, special attention is paid to how Tariana counterfactual conditional construction have been shaped by Tucanoan languages through language contact.
This paper investigates a type of empty morph that attaches to noun forms and that will be called “noun affix” here. Based on six case studies from unrelated African and American genera, I arrive at a diachronic typology of noun affixes that in many ways confirms and in other ways expands on the findings of Joseph Greenberg, whose work on the topic remains the yardstick. One claim is that noun affixes may emerge directly from gender markers and that this is reflected in the paradigm size of noun affixes. Furthermore, there is evidence for the idea that old noun affixes may be repurposed for the creation of phonologically minimal word forms. The main interest of this study is in what the development of noun affixes reveals about processes of grammaticalization. The current literature mostly focuses on the fact that grammaticalization is initiated by semantic changes (mostly semantic reduction) rather than by formal changes. This raises the question of whether semantic reduction is also completed before formal reduction. The noun affixes provide compelling evidence for this idea and thus suggest that empty morphs may arise via grammaticalization. This runs counter to approaches on which form and function erode in parallel.
This paper explores clauses of substitution (e.g. instead of relaxing on the beach, he went to a concert ) in a sample of forty-six languages. It is shown that clauses of substitution marked with monofunctional conjunctions or monofunctional converbs may not occur with standard negative markers. Clauses of substitution appearing with polyfunctional conjunctions or polyfunctional converbs may occur with obligatory standard negative markers. In these cases, negation shows a negative import as an effect of compositional interpretation. Interestingly, there are languages in which clauses of substitution marked with monofunctional clause-linking devices may occur with optional negative markers. In this scenario, the presence or absence of the negative marker does not change the adverbial relation holding between clauses. Instead, it seems to have an expressive- evaluative layer of semantic interpretation. When the negative marker is present in the clause of substitution, it indicates that the situation was not surprising. When the negative marker is absent, the situation must be understood as surprising.
El idioma originario amahuaca (familia lingüística pano, Perú) exhibe un inusual sistema de marcación de caso tripartito según el cual los sujetos de verbos intransitivos y transitivos son señalados mediante los enclíticos =x y =n, respectivamente, mientras que los objetos no registran marca morfológica alguna (Sparing-Chávez, 2007/2012; Clem 2019a; entre otros). Otra propiedad sobresaliente de este sistema es la diversidad de realizaciones que presentan los nominales al alojar a los marcadores de caso explícitos; este es, justamente, el tema principal del presente artículo. Aunque a primera vista pareciera que nos encontramos frente a una serie de manifestaciones erráticas, nuestro análisis demuestra que las realizaciones de los nominales marcados son altamente predecibles, especialmente cuando postulamos la presencia de una consonante latente que emerge fonéticamente ante =x y =n. Desde una perspectiva diacrónica, sostenemos que esta variabilidad alomórfica se relaciona con una regla propuesta por Shell (1975), que habría afectado a los trisílabos de la protolengua.
This article presents a new type of comparative linguistic survey, analyzing (socio)linguistic variation in a database of 1,155 grammatical constructions drawn from 42 diverse languages. We focus in particular on variation in the expression of grammatical meanings, and the extent to which grammatical variation differentiates geographic dialects. This is the first study we know of to present a systematic, crosslinguistic survey of dialect differentiation. We identify three main structural types of grammatical variation— form , order , and omission —and find that in situations of close contact between dialects, where signaling of distinct group identities is more relevant, form variables are more likely to differentiate dialects than the other two types. Order and omission variables usually only differentiate dialects that have minimal contact. Our survey suggests that social signaling may have a substantial role in the divergence of grammars, and provides systematic support for previous proposals regarding convergence and divergence under contact.
One construction that has traditionally been neglected in the typological study of clause-linkage is that built on ‘let alone’ (e.g., the baby can’t even talk, let alone walk). The present study explores this construction in a convenience sample of 47 languages. There are languages in which ‘let alone’ clauses appear not only with a clause-linking device, but also with an optional standard negative marker. Moreover, there are languages in which standard negation is forbidden in the ‘let alone’ clause. Here it is shown that optional standard negation may be semantically empty or may have an expressive-evaluative layer of semantic interpretation. On the other hand, standard negation tends to be forbidden in ‘let alone’ clauses appearing with semantically monofunctional clause-linking devices. The paper further investigates whether the analysis advanced for ‘let alone’ clauses can be generalized to other semantically negative adverbial clauses: ‘without V-ing’, ‘instead of V-ing’, and ‘before’ clauses. It is demonstrated that in these latter adverbial clauses, standard negation may be forbidden or optional. Interestingly, unlike the situation with ‘let alone’ clauses, there are languages in which standard negation may be obligatory in the ‘without V-ing’, ‘instead of V-ing’, and ‘before’ clause. In this scenario, the adverbial relations are compositionally encoded by a standard negative marker together with a general marker.
This investigation offers an analysis of crosslinguistic variation in the expression of clausal negative concomitance (e.g. ‘he slept without using a pillow’) in a sample of 65 languages, showing that most languages in the sample tend to use conjunctions and converbs for indicating clausal negative concomitance. The discussion of clause-linkage patterns reveals that most languages have monofunctional devices for signaling clausal negative concomitance. Intriguingly, even when languages employ a clause-linking device for conveying clausal negative concomitance, negative markers may play an important role in that they may be obligatory, optional, or disallowed in the ‘without V-ing’ clause. It is proposed that whether the clause-linking device is semantically monofunctional or polyfunctional is the key to this puzzle. The paper also shows that most languages in the sample tend to signal clausal negative concomitance and nominal negative concomitance (e.g. ‘you took a basket without holes’) in the same way. This indicates a diachronic connection between these constructions.
Many languages of lowland South America mark remoteness distinctions in their TAM systems. In Amahuaca (Panoan; Peru) multiple remoteness distinctions are made in the past and the future. I argue that the temporal remoteness morphemes (TRMs) of Amahuaca can be understood as indications of the remoteness of the event time relative to the utterance time in matrix environments. In dependent clauses, however, the picture is more complicated. By exploring adjunct switch-reference clauses, I show that TRMs in dependent clauses display a previously unreported ambiguity reminiscent of ambiguities found with adjunct tense. Specifically, they can relate the time of the adjunct clause event to the time of the matrix event or to the utterance time. I suggest that this ambiguity may arise from the availability of multiple interpretation sites for adjunct TRMs, with the possible interpretations being constrained by the temporal semantics of switch-reference markers themselves. This work thus contributes to the empirical understanding of how TRMs are interpreted in dependent clauses, suggesting interesting potential parallels to the interpretation of adjunct tense.
This paper is the first survey of verbal affixes encoding the day period (‘at night’,‘in the morning’ etc.) or the yearly seasons (‘in winter’ etc.) when the action takes place. It introduces the term ‘periodic tense’ to refer to this comparative concept, explores the attested paradigms, their interactions with other verbal categories (including the more usual deictic tense), and investigates their diachronic origins. It shows that periodic tense markers are not restricted to incorporated nouns of time period but constitute a highly grammaticalized verbal category in some languages, which can redundantly co-occur with free adverbs or nouns indicating time.
En el presente artículo proponemos un análisis fonético y musicológico del canto tradicional no bana ‘iti de los kakataibo, grupo de la familia lingüística pano de la Amazonía peruana, con el fin de contrastar los resultados con lo dicho por varios autores sobre el microtonalismo como característica de dicho canto. Con base en el análisis fonético y musical del mismo, a diferencia de estos, que proponen la existencia de variaciones microtónicas y una melodía compuesta por dos o tres notas, en el presente estudio consideramos que el canto no bana ‘iti se compone de dos notas fluctuantes: una primera más alta (H), que recae en la primera sílaba, y una segunda más grave (L), que está asociada al resto de la línea melódica. Por último, estudiaremos la interacción de estas dos notas fluctuantes con el metro kakataibo y aplicaremos esta propuesta al canto ño xakwati como ejemplo para futuros análisis.
This article deals with simulative derivations, meaning ‘pretend (to be) X ’, where X stands for a verb or a noun. It shows that these derivations have three main origins: incorporation, denominal derivation and combination of reflexive and causative. It also systematically discusses the corresponding analytic constructions.
This investigation offers an analysis of the variation in the expression of purpose relations in a sample of 49 Amazonian languages. The most common strategies are conjunctions and converbs. Interestingly, in a number of Amazonian languages, positive purpose meanings are expressed with a conjunction or a converb in combination with other morphosyntactic properties. We briefly examine the areality of positive purpose clause-linkage patterns in four contact zones in the Amazonia: the Vaupés region, the Caquetá-Putumayo region, the Southern Guiana region, and the Marañon-Huallaga region. Besides analyzing the range of ways by which positive purpose clauses are realized in the sample, we also investigate avertive clauses in a number of languages of the database. Amazonian languages show an interesting typological picture in that they tend to have avertive markers which may be intraclausal or relational.
We provide a discussion of some of the challenges in using statistical methods to investigate the morphology-syntax distinction cross-linguistically. The paper is structured around three problems related to the morphology-syntax distinction: (i) the boundary strength problem; (ii) the composition problem; (iii) the architectural problem. The boundary strength problem refers to the possibility that languages vary in terms of how distinct morphology and syntax are or the degree to which morphology is autonomous. The composition problem refers to the possibility that languages vary in terms of how they distinguish morphology and syntax: what types of properties distinguish the two systems. The architecture problem refers to the possibility that languages vary in terms of whether a global distinction between morphology and syntax is motivated at all and the possibility that languages might partition phenomena in different ways. This paper is concerned with providing an overarching review of the methodological problems involved in addressing these three issues. We illustrate the problems using three statistical methods: correlation matrices, random forests with different choices for the dependent variable, and hierarchical clustering with validation techniques.
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