The Noun Phrase in the Languages of South America (original) (raw)
This dissertation presents the first cross-linguistic study of the Noun Phrase in the indigenous languages of South America. It builds upon a considerable amount of data that have recently become available for languages in this continent. Based on a sample of 55 languages, this study gives a novel account of the syntactic, morphosyntactic, and semantic properties of the NP. For example, the analysis shows that personal pronouns commonly receive the same possessive markers as nominal possessors, which implies that a fully grammaticalized category of possessive pronouns is rare in South American languages. In addition, the new South American data only partly confirm typological claims for tendencies in the NP domain. For instance, a morphologically distinct class of adjectives is found in many languages of the sample; however, this class is often small, and the dominant way to encode property concepts is with verbs. Finally, this study also includes a discussion of the geographic patterning of structural features in the NP, evaluating the assumption that there is a major typological split between so-called Andean and Amazonian languages. The analysis shows that most of the features cannot be attributed to either of these larger areas. It also demonstrates, however, that there is some evidence for a broad structural division of languages into the western part of the continent (corresponding to the Andean sphere) and the rest of the continent. One of the features that define this split is the parameter of alienability.
Related papers
Nominal possession in Peruvian Amazonian Spanish: the role of animacy in the emergence of grammar
This study examines number agreement within the noun phrase in Peruvian Amazonian Spanish (PAS), and shows evidence for the existence of a previously undocumented morphosyntactic feature. In PAS, the possessed noun does not necessarily agree in number with the possessor pronoun, yielding the following possibilities: singular concord: su canoa; plural concord: sus canoas; and, number mismatch: sus canoa. The fourth logical possibility, su canoas, has not been attested. A usage-based approach reveals two findings with respect to the innovative construction. First, its distribution is impacted by gender and place. Second, the possessor pronoun has semantic restrictions: its anaphoric referent is highly likely to be not only multiple entities but also human. These results place animacy as a key factor in the emergence of the innovative pattern.
Attributive modification in South American indigenous languages
Linguistics (Open Access), 2022
The article deals with attributive modification in South American languages. It focuses on descriptive terms that denote properties. First of all, it is observed that attributive modification with property terms is possible in most, but not all South American languages. The typology of attributive constructions is argued to constitute a continuum, from syntactically loose nominal expressions, on the one hand, to morphologically complex structures which are ambiguous between compounding and derivation, on the other hand. The latter involves the use of lexico-grammatical means such as classifiers. The paper also raises the question of a possible diachronic link – at least for some languages – between intransitive clauses and postnominal property terms, which are often verbal in nature.
This contribution deals with the linguistic expression of possession in Kukama-Kukamiria and examines potential correlations between possessive semantic relations (Heine 1997, Stassen 2009, Barker 2011) and construction types. Kukama-Kukamiria, a language spoken in the Amazon of Peru, does not have lexical verbs such as ‘have’, ‘belong,’ or a copula to predicate possession. Although the language does not have a dedicated possessive construction, possession can be inferred from several constructions, four of which are the focus of this paper.
Ese Ejja is an Amazonian language that displays two types of noun incorporation. The first type is typical of the Amazonian area: it occurs within verb predicates, is restricted to inalienable nouns and has no influence on the valency of the verbal predicate. The second type is unusual in that it involves adjectival predicates and results in adjectives, semantically comparable to the English derived adjectives ‘blue-eyed’ or ‘red-haired’. However, the phenomenon is far more productive in Ese Ejja: adjectives do not only incorporate body-part terms but also possessed nouns, and even NPs and verbal roots. Their modifying function compensates for the quasi absence of attributive adjectives in the language. The analyses presented here are based on first-hand data collected in a Bolivian community.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.