The Noun Phrase: focus on demonstratives, redrawing the semantic map. In. L. O'Connor and P. Muysken (eds.) The native languages of South America: origins, development, typology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 250-273. (original) (raw)

The Noun Phrase: focus on demonstratives, redrawing the semantic map. In. L. O'Connor and P. Muysken (eds.) The native languages of South America: origins, development, typology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 250-273.

This paper deals with the Noun Phrase in indigenous languages of South America, focusing on the phenomenon of semantically rich demonstrative systems which are found in these languages. Before focusing on the topic of demonstratives, I will present a general profile of Noun Phrases (NPs) in South American languages. Here I discuss word order tendencies, expression and realization of adjectives, cardinality, attributive possession, (in)alienability, nominal classification, and discuss the areal component in the distribution of these features. The rest of the paper gives special attention to demonstratives. I show that the range of semantic features reported in Diessel (1999) can be extended with the following features, if we look at South American languages: perceived physical properties, posture, possession, and temporal distinctions. On the basis of the data, I suggest that although the languages vary in the richness of their demonstrative systems, this variation seems to be highly structured. The semantic features encoded by demonstratives represent a continuum running from prototypically nominal categories to prototypically verbal categories. The languages spoken in the Chaco and the Southwest Amazon region stand out for encoding a number of verbal categories by demonstratives.