This thesis describes the Ashéninka language as it is spoken in the Gran Pajonal plateau and the upper Ucayali River in Peru, an area where the last Andean foothills give way to the Amazonian... Show moreThis thesis describes the Ashéninka language as it is spoken in the Gran Pajonal plateau and the upper Ucayali River in Peru, an area where the last Andean foothills give way to the Amazonian lowlands. The number of speakers is estimated at around 10,000. This language forms part of the so-called Ashé-Ashá dialect continuum, which is part of the group of Campan languages, a subgroup of the Arawak language family. The Ashéninka people live in so-called 'comunidades nativas', indigenous settlements with official authorities that are legally recognised in Peru.The thesis presents a description of the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language. The discussion of the morphology is by far the longest, with the description of verbs comprising roughly half of the thesis due to the complex verbal morphology. Furthermore, the text discusses the relations within the Ashé-Ashá dialect continuum, compares the reality status systems of the different Campan languages and shows the partial loss of this system in Ucayali-Pajonal Ashéninka. Other relevant findings include the probable origin of the word 'campa', the non contrastive but distinctive affricates, the long adjectives denoting forms, the discussion of the subject cross-referenced with a suffix instead of the usual prefix, the proposal of the existence of a future suffix in all Ashé-Ashá varieties, and some suffixes that have not been mentioned in the literature on other Ashé-Ashá varieties.Moreover, the thesis contains annexes with 11 glossed texts from different genres and a vocabulary of 625 words. Show less
The Kampan languages have the grammatical feature called reality status, which consists of obligatory verbal affixes that express a binary opposition between realized and unrealized events.... Show moreThe Kampan languages have the grammatical feature called reality status, which consists of obligatory verbal affixes that express a binary opposition between realized and unrealized events. Although the validity of this grammatical category has been questioned for its lack of consistency cross-linguistically, the pan-Kampan system has been presented as an example of a canonical reality status opposition. This article examines and compares the almost identical reality status systems of all Kampan languages, and then, based on dedicated fieldwork, goes on to describe the change that Ucayali-Pajonal Ashéninka has undergone. This change consists in the loss of the reality status system in most I-class verbs, the largest by far of the two verb classes typical of Kampan languages, and makes Ucayali-Pajonal Ashéninka divergent in this aspect from the other Kampan languages. This loss shows a grammatical change taking place and therefore poses some questions about the evolution of such a grammatical feature, which are analyzed in the conclusions. Show less
Este artículo intenta esclarecer cuántas lenguas hay en todo el complejo ashéninka-asháninka, en el cual el Ethnologue y el Glottolog distinguen siete o seis lenguas respectivamente, algo que... Show moreEste artículo intenta esclarecer cuántas lenguas hay en todo el complejo ashéninka-asháninka, en el cual el Ethnologue y el Glottolog distinguen siete o seis lenguas respectivamente, algo que resulta evidentemente erróneo cuando se estudia la escasa bibliografía existente de las distintas variedades. En primer lugar, el artículo estudia en las fuentes el origen de esta división lingüística. Luego trata la denominación de la lengua en el Alto Perené, el Pichis y el Apurucayali y aclara por qué la denominación tradicional de la lengua en la bibliografía (ashéninka, axíninka/ajyíninka) no coincide con la autodenominación actual de los nativos (asháninka). A continuación se estudian las isoglosas que separan las distintas variedades y, en base a ellas, se propone el orden de la cadena dialectal y la división de todo el complejo ashéninka-asháninka en tres grupos principales. El estudio de la inteligibilidad mutua entre las variedades lleva a la conclusión de que puede decirse que se hablan dos lenguas en todo el complejo; sin embargo, ante la imposibilidad de trazar una frontera que separe dos lenguas, el artículo propone una división en tres lenguas basándose en dos isoglosas importantes y discute qué nombres serían los más idóneos para estas tres lenguas. También se muestran los problemas existentes en las escuelas del Ucayali y el Gran Pajonal con la lengua estándar asháninka usada en los libros del Ministerio de Educación y se informa del reconocimiento reciente del ashéninka como lengua separada, lo cual ha de dar lugar a lo largo de 2018 a un segundo estándar basado en el habla del Ucayali y el Gran Pajonal. Show less
In the Solomon Islands, four Papuan languages are spoken: Savosavo, Touo, Lavukaleve, and Bilua. Some scholars, namely Todd and Ross, have tried to prove that these languages are genetically... Show moreIn the Solomon Islands, four Papuan languages are spoken: Savosavo, Touo, Lavukaleve, and Bilua. Some scholars, namely Todd and Ross, have tried to prove that these languages are genetically related through the comparison of pronouns and other morphemes, such as object and subject affixes. Although a similarity in the pronominal forms has been identified, the low number of lexical similarities has not allowed a definitive conclusion on the existence of the family.In this paper, the pronouns and all other morphemes that carry information on gender, person, or number in each language are compared in order to identify recurrent forms carrying identical gender, person, or number information. These recurring forms are used to perform internal reconstructions in each language, which in turn are used to propose a reconstruction of some pronouns of the putative protolanguage and a family tree. The comparison among the four languages leads to the identification of an identical syncretism in clusivity between first person inclusive and second person nonsingular morphemes, which is expressed with the same form in the four languages. This syncretism, together with the very similar first and second person pronominal paradigms, are adduced as new arguments in favor of the existence of a Central Solomons family. Show less
