This MA thesis provides the first description and discussion of three temporal predicative particles (aɬta, ɬke and hata) found in Sanapaná, an underdocumented and underdescribed Enlhet-Enenlhet...Show moreThis MA thesis provides the first description and discussion of three temporal predicative particles (aɬta, ɬke and hata) found in Sanapaná, an underdocumented and underdescribed Enlhet-Enenlhet language of the Paraguayan Chaco. Furthermore, it compares the form and function of these particles in Sanapaná to that of their cognates in the other Enlhet-Enenlhet languages: Angaité, Enxet, Enlhet, Guaná and Enenlhet. As such, this thesis has three main objectives. Firstly, it aims to be a contribution to the descriptive literature on an understudied indigenous language of South America, since it is based on primary data gathered during my own field work. Secondly, it hopes to provide insights into the genetic relations between the languages of the Enlhet-Enenlhet language family. Thirdly, this work hopes to provide data for possible areal or typological studies of the phenomena manifested by these particles: tense-aspectmodality systems, and (nonverbal) predication. It is argued that aɬta, when it follows a verb, functions as a prehodiernal past marker. When it follows a word from a different word class, it can locate the referent of a noun in the past (but is not a nominal tense marker), and it makes the inherent predicativity of this word explicit, just as Kalisch (2009) argues that these particles do in Enlhet. ɬke, secondly, is argued to be an immediate aspect marker when it follows a verb, and has the same predicative force when following a word from a different class. Furthermore, it can locate the previous mention of a referent or its previous presence in the extralinguistic context in the past. Lastly, hata functions as an indefinite future marker when combined with a verb, and also has this aforementioned predicative force. Based on these (admittedly limited) Sanapaná data and that of its sister languages, it seems that Unruh & Kalisch’ (2003) hypothesis of a Western and an Eastern branch of the family is warranted: Guaná, Sanapaná and Enenlhet cluster together, while Enlhet shares fewer features with these languages. Within the former group, Guaná and Sanapaná seem to be most similar.Show less
This master’s thesis focuses on comparing and contrasting Property Concept Words (PCWs) in six Amazonian languages. PCWs are usually referred as ‘adjectives’ in Indo-European languages, words that...Show moreThis master’s thesis focuses on comparing and contrasting Property Concept Words (PCWs) in six Amazonian languages. PCWs are usually referred as ‘adjectives’ in Indo-European languages, words that have a semantic denotation of properties or features. However, they vary in different languages regarding whether they belong to a morphosyntactically distinct word class or not. In other words, whether these PCWs should all be included in an adjectival class (if exist) or some may be categorized in subclasses of nouns or verbs. In my sample of six Amazonian languages: Panare, Hup, Karajá, Jarawara, Kwaza and Cavineña, PCWs are found behaving differently in each language. When discussing whether adjectives should be classified as a separate syntactic class or not, semantics is quite often involved. Moreover, the introduction of copula clauses complicates this discussion. Payne & Payne (2013) argues for a separate word class of AD-forms instead of adjectives in Panare to represent words that are usually characterized as either ‘adjectives’ or ‘adverbs’ in Indo-European languages. However, AD-forms are quite similar to nouns in Panare. Epps (2008) agrees on a closed set of adjectives in Hup that is quite similar to verbs regarding their TAM-marking, and similar to bound nouns when occurring postnominally. According to Ribeiro (2012), Karajá lacks an independent part of speech for ‘adjectives’ where PCWs are considered a subclass of nouns without much difference from other types of nouns. Dixon’s (2004) grammar distinguishes a small closed class of adjectives from other word classes in Jarawara and at the same time argues that PCWs can also be expressed through possessed nouns and stative verbs. In Kwaza, Van der Voort (2004) claims that it is unnecessary to exhibit a distinct class of adjectives whereas PCWs behave quite similar to verbs. Lastly, Guillaume (2008) introduces two distinct subclasses of adjectives, predicative and attributive adjectives in Cavineña, where the former function as copula complements and the latter are postnominal modifiers. The six languages vary in whether adjectives should be identified as a distinct word class or not. Even though these analysis may be of different approaches, PCWs show certain similarities across languages: they can both modify nouns and function in predicative constructions; they usually can take TAM-markers; the noun-modifier construction most likely parallels possessive construction. In a nutshell, these Amazonian languages are different from prototypical Indo-European languages regarding the syntactic distribution of PCWs. However, within Amazonian languages, syntactic variability of PCWs is large but possibly limited.Show less
The origin of the research idea of this thesis comes from a feature discovered through fieldwork on Bugis, a Western Malayo-Polynesian language. In this language, two different word orders are...Show moreThe origin of the research idea of this thesis comes from a feature discovered through fieldwork on Bugis, a Western Malayo-Polynesian language. In this language, two different word orders are possible: in the basic order, different affixes occur on the verb and the arguments, while the non basic order receives no marking. The goal of this thesis is to examine some unrelated languages in order to find out if, with different word orders, there is any difference in marking. Seven languages belonging to different families and areas have been chosen for this purpose: Tuvan (South Siberian Turkic), Lao (Tai, Tai-Kadai), Figuig Berber (Berber, Afroasiatic), Itonama (Amazonian isolate), Savosavo (Papuan), Madurese (Western Malayo-Polynesian, Austronesian) and Santali (Munda, Austroasiatic). The obtained results indicate that most languages show some different marking with different word orders, and a few languages that do not, have a rigid word order that does not allow changes. The changes in marking are not as obvious as in Bugis except in Madurese, which shows a high interaction between marking and word order. Moreover, the fact that clauses with the basic word order receive more marking occurs also in Figuig Berber. Further research with many more languages would be needed in order to discover if this feature may be common cross linguistically, given that the low number of the studied languages does not allow cross linguistic generalisations.Show less
