A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia (Cambridge Grammatical Descriptions)
Cambridge University Press, 8/7/2003
EAN 9780521826648, ISBN10: 0521826640
Hardcover, 730 pages, 24.4 x 17 x 4 cm
Language: English
This is a comprehensive reference grammar of Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from a remote region in the northwest Amazonian jungle. Its speakers traditionally marry someone speaking a different language, and as a result most people are fluent in five or six languages. Because of this rampant multilingualism, Tariana combines a number of features inherited from the protolanguage with properties diffused from neighbouring but unrelated Tucanoan languages. Typologically unusual features of the language include: an array of classifiers independent of genders, complex serial verbs, case marking depending on the topicality of a noun, and double marking of case and of number. Tariana has obligatory evidentiality: every sentence contains a special element indicating whether the information was seen, heard, or inferred by the speaker, or whether the speaker acquired it from somebody else. This grammar will be a valuable source-book for linguists and others interested in natural languages.
List of tables, schemes and diagrams
Preface
Acknowledgements
Organisation and cross-referencing
List of abbreviations
Map
1. The language and its speakers
2. Phonology
3. Word classes
4. Nominal morphology and noun structure
5. Noun classes and classifiers
6. Possession
7. Case marking and grammatical relations
8. Number
9. Further nominal categories
10. Derivation and compounding
11. Closed word classes
12. Verb classes and predicate structure
13. Valency changing and argument rearranging mechanisms
14. Tense and evidentiality
15. Aspect, Aktionsart and degree
16. Mood and modality
17. Negation
18. Serial verb constructions and verb compounding
19. Complex predicates
20. Participles and nominalisations
21. Clause types and other syntactic issues
22. Subordinate clauses and clause linking
23. Relative clauses
24. Complement clauses
25. Discourse organisation
26. Issues in etymology and semantics
Appendix
Texts
Vocabulary
References
Index.