Aspects of ache grammar : descriptions and reflections about a contact hypothesis / Aspectos da gramatica ache : descrição e reflexão sobre uma hipotese de contato

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2008

RESUMO

This work Is a pilot study of some aspects of phonology and morphology of Aché, an indigenous language spoken by approximately 300 fluent speakers in the oriental region of Paraguay. It presents a phonological study of the phonemic inventory as well as a study of suprasegmental phenomena such as nasalization, stress, syllable structure, and some considerations about minimal word constraints. In the second section of the descriptive part, I outline aspects of person and number agreement, tense-aspect-mood marking, followed by a description of passive constructions and a discussion on lexical categories of the Achá language. The preceding grammatical description is particularly relevant for a wider sociolinguistic discussion of language genesis and evolution. The historical, anthropological and linguistic literature of the past two centuries suggests the hypothesis that the Aché language might be a contact language based on the lexicon of Paraguayan Guarani. My work approaches this hypothesis from an interdisciplinary standpoint, and includes some ethnographic and historic information crucial for the understanding of a possible genesis of the Aché language. In the final section I review linguistic data - the results of my field research - that can contribute to that discussion. Specifically, inside the morphosyntactic subsystem of the Aché grammar, I observe changes that can be considered abrubt and therefore the result of possible non-linear transmission. The morphosyntactic subsystem contains reduced flexional morphemes if compared to the hypothesized lexifier language - Paraguayan Guarani. The remaining flexional morphemes changed both their phonological structure and their grammatical functions. In grammatical terms, the changes can be characterized as amplifications of morphosyntactic and semantic function and might be possibly understood as outcome of processes such as analogy and reinterpretation

ASSUNTO(S)

morphology contact linguistics indios - línguas fonetica indian languages lingua ache - gramatica sociolinguistica ache language morfologia phonology

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

Documentos Relacionados