Swintha Danielsen

The Personal Paradigms in Baure and Other Southern Arawakan Languages

This article compares the person paradigms of Baure, a Southern Arawakan language of Bolivian Amazonia, to those of other Southern Arawakan languages. It is argued that, in spite of the phonetic variations found in the Arawakan languages, the person paradigms in the various languages trace back to a single person paradigm, which is proposed here for Southern Arawakan. The person formatives were presumably free forms or clitics, which appeared in different positions to fulfill different functions. In many Arawakan languages, the same forms further grammaticalized into more bound affixes. The proto-forms had a CV structure, which is not present in all Arawakan languages today, due to phonetic erosion. The paradigm most likely distinguished 1sg, 2sg, 3sgm, 3sgf, 1pl, 2pl, and 3pl forms. In addition, there may have been an unspecified third-person subject marker.

The Arawakan Matrix

This chapter investigates the cultural and linguistic characteristics of the ethno-linguistic groups of the Arawakan language family, particularly relating to situations of contact and exchange. At 1492, Arawakan languages were distributed from the Greater Antilles in the north to the Gran Chaco area in the south, and from the Amazon River mouth in the east, to the eastern Andean slopes in the west. The Arawakan languages expanded successfully across and beyond the South American continent during pre-Columbian times through a powerful cultural complex emphasizing contact and exchange with neighboring groups;, the Arawakan matrix, which this chapter aims to investigate and map. The investigators uses GIS (Geographical Information Systems) to explore the geographical distribution of cultural and linguistic features of Arawak-speaking people in space and time in order to gain a more complete picture of the timing and extension of their expansion. The chapter also adds to our current theoretical knowledge about the socio-cultural mechanisms of the Arawakan diaspora and the spatial distribution of particular linguistic features characteristic of the Arawakan language family. (Less)

Evaluating historical data (wordlists) in the case of bolivian extinct languages

Abstract This article advocates the reanalysis of historical data on extinct languages in the view of our current knowledge on the grammatical characteristics of possibly related languages.The example given here is a corpus of eight Arawakan languages of Bolivia, of which four are already extinct (Apolista, Joaquiniano, Paikoneka, Saraveka). Even though there are only wordlists available for these extinct languages, it is possible to analyze the data in the light of Arawakan grammar.Those aspects that can be excerpted from all data are taken as typological features in a questionnaire used for phylogenetic analyses. The graphs that result from the feature analysis deliver evidence for certain relations between the languages and those that are still spoken today, which again gives us some idea about the migration of the Arawakan languages, in general.

Nouns slow down speech across structurally and culturally diverse languages

Significance When we speak, we unconsciously pronounce some words more slowly than others and sometimes pause. Such slowdown effects provide key evidence for human cognitive processes, reflecting increased planning load in speech production. Here, we study naturalistic speech from linguistically and culturally diverse populations from around the world. We show a robust tendency for slower speech before nouns as compared with verbs. Even though verbs may be more complex than nouns, nouns thus appear to require more planning, probably due to the new information they usually represent. This finding points to strong universals in how humans process language and manage referential information when communicating linguistically. By force of nature, every bit of spoken language is produced at a particular speed. However, this speed is not constant—speakers regularly speed up and slow down. Variation in speech rate is influenced by a complex combination of factors, including the frequency and predictability of words, their information status, and their position within an utterance. Here, we use speech rate as an index of word-planning effort and focus on the time window during which speakers prepare the production of words from the two major lexical classes, nouns and verbs. We show that, when naturalistic speech is sampled from languages all over the world, there is a robust cross-linguistic tendency for slower speech before nouns compared with verbs, both in terms of slower articulation and more pauses. We attribute this slowdown effect to the increased amount of planning that nouns require compared with verbs. Unlike verbs, nouns can typically only be used when they represent new or unexpected information; otherwise, they have to be replaced by pronouns or be omitted. These conditions on noun use appear to outweigh potential advantages stemming from differences in internal complexity between nouns and verbs. Our findings suggest that, beneath the staggering diversity of grammatical structures and cultural settings, there are robust universals of language processing that are intimately tied to how speakers manage referential information when they communicate with one another.

News on the Jorá (Tupí-Guaraní): sociolinguistics, description, and classification

With 45 languages, the Tupi family is one of South Americas largest families. However, several gaps still remain. Some languages are already extinct and there are others for which data can no longer be collected. The situation of Jora has reached this point. This article aims to summarize all data concerning the Jora people and their language, parts of which were collected by the anthropologists Hanke (1959) and Beghin (1980) and other parts by the authors. On the basis of sparse data from several sources of differing reliability we attempt to classify the Jora language using the phoneme inventory, grammatical evidence and lexical comparison. Jora is classified as Tupi-Guarani, closely related to Siriono and Yuki.

Word formation in South American languages

This volume focuses on word formation processes in smaller and so far underrepresented indigenous languages of South America. The data for the analyses have been mainly collected in the field by the authors. The several language families described here, among them Arawakan, Takanan, and Guaycuruan, as well as language isolates, such as Yurakare and Cholon, reflect the linguistic diversity of South America. Equally diverse are the topics addressed, relating to word formation processes like reduplication, nominal and verbal compounding, clitic compounding, and incorporation. The traditional notions of the processes are discussed critically with respect to their implementation in minor indigenous languages. The book is therefore not only of interest to readers with an Amerindian background but also to typologists and historical linguists, and it is a supplement to more theory-driven approaches to language and linguistics.

The languages of South America: deep families, areal relationships, and language contact

After summarizing the earlier chapters, we sketch a general overview of the different phases in the development of South America. We then explore the possibility of a continental bias for typological features characteristic of South America, which may point to the early entry of a limited set of features into the continent. Subsequently we analyze possible deep families or macro-groups in the continent, and their regional distribution. We then turn to the issue of whether different subsets of structural features yield different distance matrices for the language families studied. To further explore contact possibilities, the results for language contact in our book are charted. Finally, we conclude and take stock of what has been achieved and how further research should proceed.