Ciucci, Luca (2015) Verb inflection, possessive inflection and morphological borrowing in Proto-Zamucoan. In: Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica (14) From: XLIX Congresso Internazionale Società di Linguistica Italiana, 24-26 September 2015, Valletta, Malta.

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Abstract

The Zamucoan family consists of two living languages: Ayoreo and Chamacoco, spoken in Northern Chaco (between Bolivia and Paraguay) by approximately 4500 and 2000 people, respectively. The Zamucoan family also includes the now extinct Old Zamuco, described in the early 18th century by the Jesuit Father Ignace Chomé (1958 [ante 1745]). All three languages present morphosyntactic correspondences, allowing robust diachronic insights (Ciucci 2013; Ciucci & Bertinetto, submitted) supporting the idea that they stem from a common ancestor: Proto-Zamucoan (PZ). No other genetically related language has so far been identified. Biological studies confirm the common origin of the Zamucoan populations, as well as their genetic distance from the surrounding indigenous populations (Demarchi & García Ministro 2008; Rickards et al. 1994).

This talk will present the reconstruction of PZ verb and possessive inflection (see Table) and will compare it with the other surrounding languages, in order to identify cases of morphological borrowing. Unlike the surrounding Chaco languages, the Zamucoan ones are fusional. Verbs express person and mood (realis vs irrealis). All languages, including Zamucoan, distinguish posses sable and non-possessable nouns: the former present personal prefixes which agree with the possessor (with the only exception of Vilela, see Fabre 2007). A unique feature of the Zamucoan languages is that possessable nouns present a split in the 3-person, such that the non-subject-coreferent 3-person contrasts with the subject-coreferent 3-person (henceforth 'reflexive-person').

Item ID:	48066
Item Type:	Conference Item (Presentation)
ISSN:	2038-3207
Related URLs:	http://linguistica.sns.it/QLL/QLL15.htm
Additional Information:	The abstract was refereed, the publication, which only consists of the materials I presented at the conference, was not refereed.
Date Deposited:	31 Aug 2017 01:02
FoR Codes:	20 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 2004 Linguistics > 200408 Linguistic Structures (incl Grammar, Phonology, Lexicon, Semantics) @ 50% 20 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 2004 Linguistics > 200406 Language in Time and Space (incl Historical Linguistics, Dialectology) @ 50%
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