Despite ample attention in the literature for alignment patterns and case frames more generally, we know very little about how these elements of grammar spread from one language to another in a... Show moreDespite ample attention in the literature for alignment patterns and case frames more generally, we know very little about how these elements of grammar spread from one language to another in a contact situation. Achieving a better understanding of this will help explain areal patterns in alignment and grammatical relation marking. In this contribution, we zoom in on a contact situation in the foothills of North-West Amazon, where languages of the Quechuan and Tukanoan families are in contact, and where previous authors have suggested that grammatical relation marking shows many potential contact effects. We find that, despite the absence of loanwords, abstract lexico-grammatical information associated with individual lexical items may spread from one language to another, especially within the class of sensation predicates. These can be characterized as lexically driven diffusion patterns, without formal borrowing, consistent with an overall characterization of the area’s sociolinguistics as loanword-avoiding. Show less
This study describes the nasal system in Ecuadorian Siona, an endangered Western Tukanoan language spoken in the Ecuadorian province of Sucumbíos, using the Earbuds Method to analyze nasal events... Show moreThis study describes the nasal system in Ecuadorian Siona, an endangered Western Tukanoan language spoken in the Ecuadorian province of Sucumbíos, using the Earbuds Method to analyze nasal events acoustically. This method provides a visual representation of the timing and duration of velum gestures through intensity (dB) and amplitude (Pa) fluctuations in the nasal and oral cavities. The studied events include nasal spreading (nasal harmony), triggers, targets, blockers, and transparent segments. Meanwhile, differences between nasal phonemes and nasal allophones are also identified along with the effects of morpheme boundaries during nasal spreading events. Results reveal that, unlike many other Tukanoan languages, /m/ and /n/ function as individual phonemes independent of their oral counterparts (/p̰/ & /t̰/). In addition, nasal harmony was identified as predominantly rightward spreading apart from syllable-delimited leftward spreading to vocoid segments. Moreover, suffixes responsible for blocking nasal spreading appear to be reminiscent of oral suffixes in Eastern Tukanoan languages. Finally, more blockers were identified in Ecuadorian Siona than in most Eastern Tukanoan languages. Show less
Ecuadorian Siona is a Western Tukanoan language spoken in eastern Ecuador. One of its remarkable features from a cross-linguistic perspective is its clause-typingsystem. Ecuadorian Siona has a... Show moreEcuadorian Siona is a Western Tukanoan language spoken in eastern Ecuador. One of its remarkable features from a cross-linguistic perspective is its clause-typingsystem. Ecuadorian Siona has a special clause type for reports: the reportative. In the majority of the world’s languages, the reportative is considered to be an evidential category rather than a clause type. The reportative expresses the speaker’s access tothe uttered information, namely, that it was obtained from someone else.The Ecuadorian Siona reportative is mutually exclusive with three other classical clause types that are part of its grammatical inventory: assertions (assertive clauses), questions (interrogative clauses) and orders (imperative clauses). The reason that the reportative can be considered as a separate clause type is that it has distinct subject agreement paradigms like the other clause types. Moreover, it exhibits clause-typingsemantics.This dissertation presents an in-depth study of the clause-typing system in Ecuadorian Siona. The morphology and the semantics involved in it are discussed from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. The study also contains a phonological sketch and an overview of the main nominal morphology, which are crucial for a reconstruction of the historical process underlying the Siona clause-typing system. Finally, the dissertation provides novel insights in the nature of both evidentiality and clause-typing. Show less
