LSNAL 36: A Grammar of Teribe

A Grammar of Teribe

J. Diego Quesada
University of Toronto

This is the first comprehensive description of the grammatical structure of Teribe, a language of Panama, and a member of the Chibchan family of languages, which covers a wide area ranging from Northeastern Honduras, through the Atlantic of Nicaragua, most of Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, to the West of Venezuela. Spoken by some 1,000 people, Teribe is at present potentially, though not severely, endangered. This grammar fills a lacuna in a twofold manner: it provides an extensive account of the structure of Teribe, and in doing so, it reduces the number of Central American Chibchan languages being undescribed.

This grammar is thus intended as a contribution to the description of the language at three levels: a. language-immanent; b. Chibchan comparative grammar; c. documentation of endangered languages, especially those of the American continent. Teribe is both a clear representative of the "Central American" features of the Chibchan languages (numeral classifiers, limited agreement, no evidentials), and idiosyncratic within these languages (having such phenomena as an inverse construction and verb serialization). The research for this book was funded in its entirety by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

ISBN 9783895866715. LINCOM Studies in Native American Linguistics 36. 200pp. 2000.