Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

The Languages of the Amazon

This is the first guide and introduction to the extraordinary range of languages in Amazonia, which include some of the most the most fascinating in the world and many of which are now teetering on the edge of extinction. Alexandra Aikhenvald, one of the worlds leading experts on the region, provides an account of the more than 300 languages, comparing their common and unique features, setting out their main characteristics, and describing the histories and cultures of the people who speak them. The languages abound in rare features and in most cases have been in contact with each other for generations, giving rise to complex patterns of linguistic influence. The author draws on her own extensive field research to tease out and analyse the patterns of their genetic and structural diversity. In the process she shows how they reflect the interrelations of language and culture: different kinship systems, for example, produce different linguistic outcomes. She also explains the roles and workings of their unusual features including evidentials, tones and whistles, and elaborate positional verbs. The book ends with a glossary of terms, and a comprehensive list of references for those interested in following up a language or linguistic phenomenon.

Mechanisms of change in areal diffusion: new morphology and language contact

Borrowing, or diffusion, of grammatical categories in language contact is not a unitary process. In the linguistic area of the Vaupe´s in northwest Amazonia, several different mechanisms help create new contact-induced morphology. Languages which are in continuous contact belong to the genetically unrelated East-Tucanoan and Arawak families. There is a strong cultural inhibition against borrowing forms of any sort (grammatical or lexical). Language contact in the multilingual Vaupe´s linguistic area has resulted in the development of similar – though far from identical – grammatical structures. In Tariana, an Arawak language spoken in the area, reanalysis and reinterpretation of existing categories takes place when diffusion involves restructuring a pre-existing category for which there is a slot in the structure, such as case. A new grammatical category with no pre-existing slots may evolve via grammaticalization of a free morpheme – this is how aspect and aktionsart marking was developed. The development of a five-term tense-evidentiality paradigm involves a combination of strategies : reanalysis with reinterpretation accounts for the obligatory tense marking,and the history of visual, inferred and reported evidentials. The nonvisual evidential evolved via grammaticalization of a lexical verb while the most recent, assumed, evidential involves reanalysis and reinterpretation of an aspect marker and grammatical accommodation.

The essence of mirativity

Abstract The range of mirative meanings across the worlds languages subsumes sudden discovery, surprise, and unprepared mind of the speaker (and also the audience or the main character of a story). Mirative markers may also convey overtones of counterexpectation and new information. The range of mirative meanings may be expressed through a verbal affix, a complex predicate, or a pronoun. Evidentials whose major function is to express information source may have mirative extensions, especially in the context of the 1st person subject. The mirative category appears to be susceptible to linguistic diffusion.

Linguistic fieldwork: setting the scene

Abstract Linguistic fieldwork is the backbone of an empirically-based science of linguistics. Firsthand information on barely known minority languages is essential for our understanding of human languages, their structural properties and their genetic relationships. ‘Immersion’ fieldwork as major ‘must’ is contrasted to ‘interview’ fieldwork as a less desirable option. We aim at an open-ended documentation of each language, intended for various audiences, being both accessible and user-friendly. This introductory essay introduces a number of issues concerning linguistic fieldwork, discussed in some detail by the contributors to this issue, each a highly experienced fieldworker and a recognised authority in their fields. This is what makes the issue special.

Classifiers and Noun Classes: Semantics

Almost all languages have some grammatical means for the linguistic categorization of nouns and nominals. The continuum of noun categorization devices covers a range of devices, from the lexical numeral classifiers of Southeast Asia to the highly grammaticalized gender agreement classes of Indo-European languages. They have a similar semantic basis, and one can develop from the other. They provide a unique insight into how people categorize the world through their language in terms of universal semantic parameters involving humanness, animacy, sex, shape, form, consistency, and functional properties. Noun categorization devices are morphemes that occur in surface structures under specifiable conditions, and denote some salient perceived or imputed characteristics of the entity to which an associated noun refers (Allan, 1977: 285). They are restricted to classifier constructions, morphosyntactic units (e.g., noun phrases of different kinds, verb phrases, or clauses) that require the presence of a particular kind of morpheme, the choice of which is dictated by the semantic characteristics of the referent of the nominal head of a noun phrase. Noun categorization devices come in various guises. We distinguish noun classes, noun classifiers, numeral classifiers, classifiers in possessive constructions, and verbal classifiers. Two relatively rare types are locative and deictic classifiers. They share a common semantic core and differ in the morphosyntactic contexts of their use and in their preferred semantic features. Research Background: This article is a concise and encyclopaedic summary of grammatical means for the linguistic categorization of nouns and nominals based on original work by Aikhenvald. The continuum of noun categorization devices covers a range of devices, from the lexical numeral classifiers of Southeast Asia to the highly grammaticalized gender agreement classes of Indo-European languages. They provide a unique insight into how people categorize the world through their language in terms of universal semantic parameters involving humanness, animacy, sex, shape, form, consistency, and functional properties. Research Contribution: The main contribution of this article is the formulation of parameters of variation and semantics of noun categorization devices across several hundred of the worlds languages. The article provides original insights into human categorization of nominal entities and culturally relevant parameters of categorization, which may also be influenced by social and physical environment. Research Significance: This article is part of the fundamental Encyclopaedia of Languages and Linguistics which is a major reference source in the area of linguistics, languages and cognitive and behavioural studies. Noun categorization devices come in various guises. We distinguish noun classes, noun classifiers, numeral classifiers, classifiers in possessive constructions, and verbal classifiers. Two relatively rare types are locative and deictic classifiers. They share a common semantic core and differ in the morphosyntactic contexts of their use and in their preferred semantic features. This article breaks new grounds in offering a comprehensive empirically based approach to human categorization of entities, and correlations between language and culture. It is widely quoted and considered a major reference for the typology of categorization devices.

Classifiers in multiple environments: Baniwa of Içana/Kurripako - a North Arawak perspective

Baniwa of Içana/Kurripako, a North Arawak language, has two genders and numerous classifiers employed in various morphosyntactic environments: with numbers, as derivational suffixes on nouns, in possessive constructions, and on adjectives. Some classifiers have the same form in all contexts, while others have different forms. The Baniwa of Içana/Kurripako system is contrasted with the system in Tariana, a closely related North Arawak language which underwent massive restructuring under the influence of the neighboring East Tucanoan languages. Comparison with other Arawak languages of the region provides additional evidence in favor of the system of Baniwa of Içana/ Kurripako classifiers being more archaic than that of Tariana.

Round Women and Long Men: Shape, Size, and the Meanings of Gender in New Guinea and Beyond

The concept of gender has three faces. Natural gender (N-gender, or sex), Social gender (S-gender), which reflects the social implications of being a man or a woman (or perhaps something in between), and Linguistic gender (L-gender). L-gender tends to mirror social and cultural stereotypes of S-gender. Recurrent correlations between shape, size, and L-gender choice are a feature of languages of the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea. After a brief summary of L-gender and the principles of its choice across languages, a detailed analysis is offered of L-gender choice in Manambu, a Ndu language from the Sepik region. It is shown that gender assignment to humans correlates with N-gender and reflects S-gender status. Other nouns have no fixed gender. Their gender depends on the physical properties of the noun’s referent. We then turn to a cross-linguistic survey of other languages, in New Guinea and beyond, where shape and size are deployed as semantic parameters in L-gender choice. Further semantic correlates of gender assignment in the languages of the world include the roles of referents in myths, and salient properties correlating with the position of S-gender (especially relevant for L-gender choice and L-genders switches for humans).

Nominal classification: towards a comprehensive typology

This introduction to this issue outlines the main issues concerning nominal classification within a typological perspective and gives a short overview of the problems discussed in the contributions to the issue. These nclude: typology of multiple classifier systems; languages with several coexisting classifier types; noun class agreement on multiple targets; semantics, development and obsolescence of classifiers; and their semantic and discourse functions.

Evidentials: their links with other grammatical categories

Abstract Evidentiality – a grammatical expression of information source (Aikhenvald 2004, 2014a) – is often expressed on a clausal level, and its marking is associated with the verb. In a few languages, a noun phrase can acquire its own evidential specification. Evidentiality can be expressed autonomously, or be fused with another grammatical category, including aspect, tense, or mood for verbs, or spatial distance and topicality for noun phrases. We investigate interactions and dependencies between evidentiality and other grammatical categories, both verbal and nominal. A number of such dependencies is supported by the diachronic development and history of evidentials.

Multilingual Imperatives: The Elaboration of a Category in Northwest Amazonia

The Vaupés River Basin in northwest Amazonia is a well‐established linguistic area. Its major feature is obligatory societal multilingualism which follows the principle of linguistic exogamy: “those who speak the same language as us are our brothers, and we do not marry our sisters.” Speakers of East Tucanoan languages and of one Arawak language, Tariana, participate in the exogamous marriage network and share the obligatory multilingualism. Long‐term interaction between East Tucanoan languages and Tariana has resulted in the rampant diffusion of grammatical and semantic patterns and calquing of categories. A typologically unusual system of 11 imperatives in Tariana bears a strong impact from East Tucanoan languages; but to say that imperative meanings were just borrowed or calqued from East Tucanoan languages would be a simplification. The markers come from different non‐imperative categories, via distinct mechanisms. I discuss the mechanisms involved in the development of Tariana multiple imperatives and then address the crucial question: Which factors facilitate the diffusion of commands?