A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest AmazoniaThis is a comprehensive reference grammar of Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from a remote region in the northwest Amazonian jungle. Its speakers traditionally marry someone speaking a different language, and as a result most people are fluent in five or six languages. Because of this rampant multilingualism, Tariana combines a number of features inherited from the protolanguage with properties diffused from neighbouring but unrelated Tucanoan languages. Typologically unusual features of the language include: an array of classifiers independent of genders, complex serial verbs, case marking depending on the topicality of a noun, and double marking of case and of number. Tariana has obligatory evidentiality: every sentence contains a special element indicating whether the information was seen, heard, or inferred by the speaker, or whether the speaker acquired it from somebody else. This grammar will be a valuable source-book for linguists and others interested in natural languages. |
Contents
Phonology | 25 |
Word classes | 66 |
Nominal morphology and noun structure | 82 |
Case marking and grammatical relations | 139 |
Number | 164 |
Further nominal categories | 183 |
Derivation and compounding | 196 |
Closed word classes | 203 |
Complex predicates | 449 |
Participles and nominalisations | 460 |
Clause types and other syntactic issues | 475 |
Subordinate clauses and clause linking | 515 |
Relative clauses | 537 |
Complement clauses | 547 |
Discourse organisation | 561 |
Issues in etymology and semantics | 594 |
Verb classes and predicate structure | 234 |
Valency changing and argument rearranging mechanisms | 258 |
Tense and evidentiality | 287 |
Aspect Aktionsart and degree | 324 |
Mood and modality | 371 |
Negation | 400 |
Serial verb constructions and verb compounding | 423 |
vii | 443 |
Appendix The main features of the Tariana dialects | 620 |
Texts | 630 |
Vocabulary | 671 |
References | 682 |
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Common terms and phrases
1pl-OBJ 1sg-OBJ 3sgnf-go adjectives adpositions adverb Aikhenvald Aktionsart Aktionsart enclitics ambitransitive verb animate Arawak languages argument asymmetrical serial Baniwa Baniwa of Içana Brito calque Cândido Chapter classifier clitic closed class complement clause complex predicate components constituent contains contrast copula cross-referencing prefixes DEM:ANIM di-a di-a-pidana diha ART discussed enclitic evil spirit examples fish function grammaticalisation head noun illustrated imperative inaru inferred interrogative intransitive jaguar kayu kinship nouns kuphe kwana locative main clause manioc marked marker meaning modifier morpheme morphological causative nawiki negation negative nhua nominalisation non-visual evidential noun class noun phrase nu-na nuku obligatorily occur Periquitos phia phonological word plural possessed nouns properties remote past root Santa Rosa secondary verbs semantic serial construction serial verb construction Sio verbs stative verbs story subordinate clause syntactic Tariana tense tense-evidentiality transitive verbs Tucano languages unmarked visual evidential vowel woman yawi younger speakers