Fonologia della lingua cuna (dule gaya)

Luciano Giannelli, Giovanna Marotta & Beatrice Pacini
Università degli Studi di Siena, Università degli Studi di Pisa, Università degli Studi di Siena

Il volume consta di tre diversi contributi, dedicati ad aspetti della fonologia e della sociolinguistica su base di variabili fonetiche della lingua cuna (dule gaya). Il primo lavoro, di L.Giannelli, si diffonde sui principali problemi della fonologia della lingua, segnata soprattutto, notoriamente, da un'opposizione tra consonanti deboli e consonanti forti che viene però rivisitata (e precisata anche nelle sue realizzazioni fonetiche) alla luce della variabilità, insopprimibile in assoluto e imprescindibile in cuna. Il riferimento è anche ad aspetti diacronici ricostruibili. Il secondo contributo, di G.Marotta, affronta un capitolo inesplorato della fonologia cuna, l'assetto metrico-accentuale, alla luce della teoria della fonologia metrica, assunta non acriticamente, inserendo i caratteri cuna all'interno di una griglia tipologica, nella sua natura fodamentale trocaica ma anche nelle sue specificità di impiego pragmatico della violazione del riaggiustamento accentuale in sede postlessicale. Il terzo articolo, di B.Pacini, nel quadro di un'analisi linguistica di impianto esplicitamente laboviano, commisura la variabilità fonetica, relativamente all'indebolimento consonantico, all'opposizione di genere, riscontrando nel dato empirico di una chiara discrasia un nesso preciso con la tendenza evolutiva manifesta, tutta contenuta in ambito di regole che non intaccano la struttura del sistema fonologico, che segna attualmente lo svolgimento diacronico del cuna.

ISBN 9783895866999. LINCOM Studies in Native American Linguistics 42. 100pp. 2002.

Relativization in Shipibo-Konibo

A typologically-oriented study

Pilar Valenzuela
Max-Planck-Institut for Evolutionary Anthropology

This study provides the first account of the relativization system of Shipibo-Konibo (SK), a Panoan language from the Peruvian Amazon. It is based on a corpus of spontaneous text, complemented by plenty of elicited material. In addition to examining the rich variety of relative constructions available in SK, major grammatical features of the language are addressed and illustrated to different degrees (e.g., basic constituent order, case-marking, agreement on adverbials, second position clitics, etc.). The dominant relativization pattern in SK involves embedded, moderately nominalized relative clauses; however, nominalization is not a differential strategy since nominalizers do not help identify the grammatical role of clausal arguments. Although SK has a fairly complex switch-reference system and clause-chaining is pervasive in discourse, reference-marked clauses do not generally take part in relativization.

A finding of special typological interest is the use of structurally similar prenominal, postnominal, and internally-headed relatives; non-referential relatives may be of the adjoined type. As for relativization strategies, SK may employ anaphoric pronouns all along the "Accessibility Hierarchy"; this strategy is clearly attested prenominally, violating the order found in the normal interclausal anaphoric situation. Another remarkable finding is the use of an absolutive pivot in internally-headed relativization; i.e., an instance of syntactic ergativity in a language with an otherwise nominative-accusative syntax.

ISBN 9783895863042. LINCOM Studies in Native American Linguistics 43. 102pp. 2002.

The grammar of time reference

Jürgen Bohnemeyer
MPI for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen

This study provides an in-depth analysis of the morphosyntax, semantics, and pragmatics of the major grammatical constructions involved in time reference in Yukatek Maya, a native Meso-american language spoken on the peninsula of Yucatán.

The description traces temporal properties in clause structure, lexical predicate classes, verb inflection and derivation, adverbial modification, and clause and sentence combination, and thus covers a substantial part of the core grammar of the language. It gives one of the most comprehensive and detailed accounts of the expression of temporality in any Non-Indo-European language to date.Yukatek emerges as a language in which relations of event order are largely left unexpressed. There are no absolute or relative tenses, and no temporal connectives equivalent to after, before, etc. Communication about event order relies heavily on the coding of aspectual and modal information, enriched by pragmatic inferences from context and world knowledge. Further features of interest to typologists and time semanticists include 'phase' verbs (translating 'begin', 'end', etc.) with a semantics markedly distinct from those of phasal operators in better studied languages; lack of any formal reflexes of telicity; temporal connectives with aspectual meanings; and grammaticalized distinctions of 'degrees of remoteness' that are not combined with expressions of tense.

ISBN 9783895863455. LINCOM Studies in Native American Linguistics 44. 512pp. 2002.

Polyvalence of Root Classes in Yukatekan Mayan Languages

Ximena Lois & Valentina Vapnarsky
EREA-CNRS

Lexical categories exhibit parametric variation across languages. Most Indo-European languages reveal a rich pattern of derivation between nouns and verbs. Mayan languages in general have less recourse to derivational processes resulting in formal similarities between verbs and nouns at the level of morphophonology and morphosyntax. Focusing on Yukatekan languages, this book shows that these similarities occurr even at the lexical root level. This leads us to review previous root classifications and to propose a large verbonominal root class that we oppose to another main class, the nominal roots.

The verbonominal class includes traditional transitive roots and intransitive roots, as well as agent-salient roots that are commonly considered to be nominal roots. Such a system can account for the categorial flexibility exhibited by Mayan roots and allows us to formulate generalizations missing in previous classifications.

A new conception of the role of phonology and of morphophonological processes in Mayan languages is proposed. We introduce the notion of instantiation, a twofold process that encompass the formation of phonological profiles (determination of the vowel in the general template CVC) and morphological profiles (inflection). Instantiation handles root-class polyvalence and subsumes the so-called voices traditionally considered to be derivational in nature. The link between the split-ergativity system exhibited in Yukatekan languages and properties of verbonominal roots is examined. The final part deals with the intricate categories of positionals and affectives. Extensive lists of members of the different root classes are given in Appendices.

ISBN 9783895867071. LINCOM Studies in Native American Linguistics 47. 246pp. 2001.

Lengua toba (guaycurú)

Aspectos gramaticales y discursivos

Cristina Messineo
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas de Argentina (CONICET) / Universidad de Buenos Aires

El toba (guaycurú) es la lengua hablada por los indígenas tobas (qom l'ek) que habitan en la región del Gran Chaco y en asentamientos ubicados en las ciudades de Rosario, Santa Fe, Buenos Aires y La Plata (Argentina). Desde el punto de vista socio-lingüístico, es una lengua minoritaria que en ciertos ámbitos comunicativos ha sido desplazada por el español y cuya transmisión intergeneracional está inter-rumpiéndose.

En cuanto a sus rasgos tipológicos, el toba presenta características de una lengua aglutinante polisintética, con procesos morfológicos complejos. La codificación diferenciada de los roles semánticos de los participantes en la morfología pronominal de los verbos evidencia rasgos de una lengua de tipo Activo/Inactivo. Otra de las características de esta lengua es la distinción de los nombres en alienables e inalienables y la falta de una clase definida de adjetivos. Desde el punto de vista de la tipología del orden de los constituyentes, puede caracterizarse como una lengua de orden libre o flexible, siendo el orden básico o no marcado SVO para las oraciones transitivas y VS para las intransitivas, combinación que estaría reflejando rasgos de ergatividad en la lengua.

El presente estudio se basa en investigaciones de campo realizadas en comunidades rurales de la provincia de Chaco (Argentina) y en asentamientos urbanos de Buenos Aires. Si bien se sustenta en un modelo descriptivo de la lengua, constituye el resultado de un interés centrado en la búsqueda de la relación entre la lengua y la cultura toba. Su propósito fundamental es describir e interpretar determinados aspectos de la fonología, la morfosintaxis y el discurso toba a fin de contribuir a la urgente tarea de documentación de las lenguas indígenas de América del Sur.

ISBN 9783895863103. LINCOM Studies in Native American Linguistics 48. 240pp. 2003.

Aperçu grammatical du totonaque de Huehuetla, Puebla, Mexique

Duna Troiani
CELIA-CNRS, Paris

Le totonaque est surtout étudié sous sa variante dialectale de Papantla, Veracruz. On présente ici une autre variante, celle de Huehuetla dans la Sierra de Puebla.

L'introduction situe l'environnement dans lequel s'est déroulée l'enquête. Après avoir examiné la phonologie, et la prédication nominale et adjectivale, l'essentiel de l'ouvrage se centre sur la morphologie verbale et les catégories qu'elle exprime : aspect-temps, diathèse et variations d'actance. Le totonaque est une langue non-casuelle et indiciante qui marque systématiquement les variations d'actance telles que la forme applicative, causative,… et permet l'intégration actancielle des relations sociative, instrumentale et locative. Les phénomènes d'augmentation et de réduction des participants à l'action sont remarquablement réguliers en totonaque. Un des traits typologiques des plus particuliers se trouve dans les relations actancielles intra-verbales : ce n'est pas la hiérarchie fonctionnelle qui prime dans la distribution des actants sur le plan syntagmatique, mais la hiérarchie personnelle. L'ouvrage se termine par un corpus de récits, présentés avec leur transcription morphologique, leur traduction littérale espagnole et la traduction française.

ISBN 9783895868160. LINCOM Studies in Native American Studies 49. 220pp. 2004

Morfossintaxe da língua Parkatêjê

Marília Ferreira
Universidade Federal do Pará

A língua Parkatêjê é uma língua em perigo de extinção, que pertence ao tronco Macro-Jê. Somente 10% de um povo que soma aproximadamente 400 pessoas, fala essa língua no sudeste do Estado do Pará (Brasil), Partindo-se de uma perspectiva funcional-tipológica foram descritos e analisados aspectos centrais da morfosintaxe: as classes de palavras; a sintaxe das sentenças independentes; o sistema de marcação de caso nessas sentenças; alguns mecanismos de derivação verbal; o fenômeno da incorporação nominal e as construções verbais seriais. O Parkatêjê é uma língua de marcação no núcleo, que apresenta um sistema sofisticado de indicar as relações entre núcleos e argumentos, quando há re-arranjos na sintaxe usual de suas estruturas.

The Parkatêjê language is spoken by two groups, which live in two villages very close to each other: one is located at km 25 and the other at km 30 on BR-222 highway, in the southeast of Para state. There are about 400 people in both villages. The data used in this thesis were collected in Mãe Maria village, located at km 30. This thesis presents a typological-functional morphosyntatic description of some aspects of the Parkatêjê language, which belongs to the Macro-Jê stock. This work presents the description of: (i) word classes; (ii) the syntax of simple sentences; (iii) the case-marking system; (iv) some mechanisms of verbal derivation; (v) nominal incorporation phenomena and (vi) serial verb constructions. Parkatêjê is a head-marking language and it presents a very interesting system for indicating the relation between heads and arguments. In the case of nouns and some transitive and non-active intransitive verbs, for example, this relationship is shown by relational prefixes.

ISBN 9783895868399. LINCOM Studies in Native American Linguistics 50. 135pp. 2005.

A Practical Grammar of the San Carlos Apache Language

Willem J. de Reuse
(University of North Texas), with the assistance of Phillip Goode

San Carlos Apache is a variety of Western Apache, a Southern Athabascan (or Apachean) language spoken on and around the San Carlos Reservation in east central Arizona, USA. It might of interest to Karl May readers to know that the Apache words in Karl May’s Winnetou books were actually San Carlos Apache, even though Winnetou was supposed to have been a Mescalero Apache.

Although there might be as many as 13,000 speakers of Western Apache, very few children are learning the language, and therefore its future is not assured. This pedagogical grammar covers the major topics of San Carlos Apache phonology, morphology, and syntax. It is designed for undergraduate university students and high school language teachers with some training in linguistics. It can also be used as a teach yourself text. Since there is at this time no reference grammar, it can also be profitably used as a reference document by professional linguists. The work contains an introduction on the goals and scope of the text, an introductory lesson on the pronunciation and spelling of San Carlos Apache, followed by 20 graded lessons on morphological and syntactic topics. Each of these lessons contains grammatical explanations, numerous example sentences, exercises for non-native speakers, more advanced exercises for native speakers, and dialogs with translations. The appendices contain suggestions for further reading, a detailed index of grammatical terminology and topics, and an index to the verb paradigms. The book ends with full Apache-English and English-Apache glossaries.

This grammar was written with the assistance of Phillip Goode, a renowned native language expert and teacher. Several other native language consultants also provided input.

ISBN 9783895868610. LINCOM Studies in Native American Linguistics 51. 588pp. 2006. Course discounts available.

Estudo fonológico da língua Sateré-Mawé

Raynice Geraldine Pereira da Silva
UNICAMP

This work presents a phonological study of the Sateré-Mawé language, classified as the unique member of mawé family, in the Tupi linguistic branch. Sateré-Mawé is spoken by approximatily 8.000 people, in the indigenous area of Andirá-Marau, located in the frontier of Amazonas and Pará states, in Brazil. This work includes five chapters, conclusion and bibliography. The first chapter is an introduction and contains general informations about the metodology of fieldwork and the theoretical fundamentals employed in this research. Besides that, works about Sateré-Mawé are briefly shown. In the second chapter I present ethnographic informations about Sateré-Mawé people and some notes about linguistic classification and bilingualism. The third chapter is dedicated to the definition of the phonemes and the allophones of the language, based on Pike´s phonemic analysis model. I also broach some morphophonemic processes in word or morpheme frontiers. The fourth chapter deals with the syllable structure, considering the sonority hierarchy to the definition of the syllabic types and the segments distribution. I also discuss the syllabification process, sequences of ambiguous segments and the syllabic quantity in order to define the minimal word. The last chapter presents the stress pattern in simple and compound words. I analyse this stress pattern founded on the metrical approach and the constitution of the phonological word.

Keywords: Indigenous Languages; Sateré-Mawé language; Phonology; Indios language – Phonology.

Este trabalho apresenta um estudo fonológico da língua Sateré-Mawé, classificada como membro único da família Mawé, tronco lingüístico Tupi. A língua é falada por aproximadamente 8.000 indígenas que habitam a Terra Indígena Andirá-Marau, localizada na divisa dos Estados do Amazonas e do Pará-Brasil. O trabalho inclui cinco capítulos, conclusão e bibliografia. O primeiro capítulo é introdutório e contém informações gerais sobre a metodologia de trabalho de campo e o referencial teórico adotado na pesquisa. Ainda neste capítulo é apresentado um apanhado de trabalhos existentes relativos à língua Sateré-Mawé. O segundo capítulo apresenta informações etnográficas sobre o povo Sateré-Mawé e algumas notas sobre a classificação da língua e sobre sua situação de bilingüismo. O terceiro capítulo é dedicado à definição dos fonemas e alofones da língua, tendo por base o modelo de análise fonêmica de Pike. Abordamos ainda alguns processos morfofonêmicos que ocorrem em fronteira de morfema e palavra. O quarto capítulo analisa a estrutura silábica, levando em consideração a hierarquia de sonoridade para a definição dos tipos silábicos e a distribuição dos segmentos. Também neste capítulo tratamos do processo de silabificação, das seqüências de segmentos ambíguos e da quantidade silábica para a definição da palavra mínima. O quinto e último capítulo trata do acento em palavras simples e compostas. Analisamos também o acento a partir de uma abordagem métrica, bem como a constituição da palavra fonológica.

Palavras-chave: Línguas Indígenas; Língua Sateré-Mawé; Fonologia; Índios Línguas – Fonologia.

ISBN 9783895864957. LINCOM Studies in Native American Linguistics 52. 146pp. 2006.