Cadernos de Etnolingüística
volume 8, número 2, publicação contínua
The origin of split third person marking in Arara (Cariban)
Arara, a Cariban language spoken in the state of Pará, Brazil, shows several splits in its third person marking. Intransitive verbs with a third person S and transitive verbs with a 3>3 scenario are marked by either i-/Ø/t(ɨ)- or n(i)-/n(ɨ)-, depending on the TAM configuration. The forms with i-/Ø/t(ɨ)- can be demonstrated to descend from earlier subordinate clause forms, while those with n(i)-/n(ɨ)- are original main clause forms. Furthermore, these former subordinate clauses, as well as extant ones, otherwise use main clause person markers in Arara, which is unusual in the Cariban family. I show that Arara has extended main clause marking to (some) subordinate clauses for all persons, except for those with third person subjects. This resulted in a paradigm which contains prefixes from both Proto-Cariban main clauses and Proto-Cariban subordinate clauses, but has the overall organization of Proto-Cariban main clauses. This type of innovative main clause coexists with the clauses showing the original main clause paradigm, leading to the split in third person. I also show that Arara’s sister language, Ikpeng has extended this new paradigm to all clause types. I further show that a similar extension has happened in the third member of the Pekodian branch, Bakairi. This is of importance for the reconstruction of Proto-Cariban third person marking. I also show that Arara preserves n(i)-/n(ɨ)- in similar semantic contexts as other Cariban languages.
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| vol8n2-1.pdf | PDF document | 168.43 kB | Info |