This paper is a comparative analysis of existential and standard negation across Northern Dene. There are two strategies for existential negation: some languages use a negative verb, while others use a negative morpheme reconstructed as *də-weˑ. Standard negation involves negative inflection in some languages; most of them require additional preverbal or postverbal negative particles. The languages

Six lexical forms found in similar phonetic shapes in numerous languages of Greater Amazonia are presented and traced throughout various linguistic lineages of this region. Besides a detailed lexical documentation of the six forms in languages and proto-languages of South America, this article provides appropriate maps showing the geographical distribution of each of these forms. Five of the six lexical

This article is about four aspectual adverbs in Q’eqchi’ (Maya), which may be loosely glossed as ak ‘already’, maaji’ ‘not yet’, toj ‘still’, and ink’a’ chik ‘no longer’. The author shows the presupposition and assertion structure of these forms in unmarked usage (as sentential operators acting on imperfective predicates) and argues that they constitute a dual group in the tradition of Loebner (1989)

In Lakota (Siouan) nouns (N) frequently occur adjacent to stative verbs (SV). Extant descriptions of Lakota grammar treat the as a syntactic compound in which the SV modifies the N. The present study offers a novel analysis that shows that the N and SV are uncompounded and that postnominal modification occurs only when the sequence is RP-internal, whereas in clause-final position it functions as a

Based on original fieldwork, in this paper I explore and present a formal semantic analysis of past temporal reference in Guajajára, a variety of Tenetehára, a Tupí-Guaraní language of Brazil. I examine the empirical behavior and semantic contribution of the morphemes ra’a and ri’i and analyze them as past remoteness morphemes that encode both past and remoteness distinctions. I argue that, like tenses

Boróro, the sole surviving language of the Bororoan language family, presents a number of consonantal alternations throughout its inflection paradigms. In this paper I offer a rule-based description of Boróro consonantal alternations that differs substantially from earlier accounts of the same facts, which suffer from inconsistencies and do not account for all the data. Moreover, I show that my description

At least two living varieties of Quechua (Tarma and Santiago del Estero) display productive synchronic systems in which phoneme substitutions among the set /s, ʃ, h/ in lexemes impart augmentative—diminutive sense or affectionate—deprecative connotation. Evidence is presented here to support the reconstruction of such a system to Proto-Quechuan based primarily on these two living systems and on lexical

We examine the patterns of loanword adaptation in Maxakalí, a Macro-Jê language of Brazil, in importing loans from Brazilian Portuguese, with respect to the introduction of nasality and nasal harmony, based on a corpus of 18 speakers. Employing MaxEnt modeling of quantitative trends enabled the comparison and analysis of certain recurrent trends, even if not exceptionless, and the potentially additive

This article presents a large set of data concerning Mapudungun expressions of desire. It throws light on two phenomena: the language’s bouletic transparency and its alternative means to convey future orientation. The former is related to the cross-linguistic tendency to mark want predicates with counterfactual morphology and express, by these means, either wish or would want statements. It will be

The Ch’orti’ antipassive system is more conservative than that of the other Ch’olan languages, thus challenging the claim of direct Ch’orti’-to-Ch’olti’ descent. Except for the innovative suffix -ma, the suffixes are reflexes of historical Mayan antipassives *-(V)n and *-(V)w. Four antipassive suffixes (-ma, -on, -o, and -yan) are used in Ch’orti’ to form absolutive antipassives without patients, and

Wuzzie George (b. ~1880, d. December 20, 1984) was, by all accounts, a true keeper of traditional knowledge. Over the course of more than three decades, she provided detailed ethnographic information about her people, the Toidɨkadɨ (Cattail-Eaters), for ethnographer Margaret Wheat (1967) and anthropologist and historical linguist Catherine S. Fowler (1992). Wuzzie also had an ongoing working relationship

TheWalker River Paiute, orAgaiDɨkadɨ (eaters of Lahontan cutthroat trout,Oncorhynchus clarkii henshawi), are organized as the federally recognized Walker River Paiute Tribe and live on the Walker River in and around Schurz, Nevada. As in other southern varieties, the Walker River dialect has three consonant grades (lenis, fortis, voiced fortis). Like the Mono Lake variety, it also preserves the Numic

Although it is clear that the term “Yahooskin” is not a native term (likely originating from the Sahaptin (Ichiskiin) language), it has been in general use as a reference to disparate Northern Paiute bands (e.g., YapatɨkaɁa, ‘wild carroteaters’) around any of several lake basins of south-central Oregon, including the Silver, Summer, and Abert lakes, and theWarner Valley region. These bands were brought

This volume of Northern Paiute texts is the result of continued collaborative relationships between members of several Northern Paiute (Western Numic; Uto-Aztecan) speech communities and two linguists who have nearly 30 years of combined experience working on the language. The resulting documentary resource provides varied samples of naturally occurring speech—narratives recorded and analyzed by the

The Bannock, whose precontact territory centered around the Snake River plain of southwestern Idaho and the Boise River valley, speak the variety of Northern Paiute most influenced by its close linguistic relative, Shoshoni. This influence may be due to a combination of factors, including the overlapping nature of aboriginal territories, the acquisition of the horse and buffalo-hunting culture, and

TheMcDermitt reservation straddles the Oregon-Nevada border and is the home of the majority of all remaining first language Northern Paiute speakers. Like the Duck Valley Reservation, it is quite isolated, lying approximately 90 miles northeast of the town of Winnemucca, Nevada (population >7,000). The following stories are two of the many texts collected in the early 1960s by Sven Liljeblad from Pete

The Pyramid Lake Reservation is about an hour’s drive northeast of Reno, Nevada. As such, it lies close to the major isogloss boundary that separates Oregon Northern Paiute (including Bannock) fromNevada Northern Paiute (Paviotso). The lake, a remnant of ancient Lake Lahontan, is home to the endemic Lahontan cutthroat trout, known locally as kuiyui, and is a popular fishery. The story of Cannibal Owl

The southernmost variety of Northern Paiute is spoken aroundMono Lake, an alkaline lakeon the eastern slopes of theSierraNevada, and to its immediatenorth. The community atMono Lake, the KudzaDɨka’a (eaters of kudzabi, alkali fly pupae), is centered around LeeVining, California, and organized as the Kutzadika’a Paiute Indian Community, which is seeking federal recognition. The same variety is also

The Shoshone-Paiute community of Duck Valley includes reservation territory that straddles the Idaho-Nevada border. Recordings of the Duck Valley communolect were made at the home of the speaker’s niece in the presence of several extended family members, including speakers, passive bilinguals and nonspeakers alike, as well as children. The speaker was 60 years old at the time and clearly enjoyed recounting

The Harney Valley, or tibidzi yipɨ (the True Valley), region of southeastern Oregon is a rich and varied landscape consisting of all the extremes one expects to find in the Great Basin—vast marshlands, high-elevation grasslands, alkali basins, pine forest, and ephemeral lakebeds and rivers. This high desert area attracts hundreds of thousands of water and other fowl (as well as birdwatchers) on their

Uto-Aztecan subgrouping has long been the subject of debate. We aim to establish a more up-to-date foundation for Uto-Aztecan lexicostatistics by reexamining Wick Miller’s influential lexicostatistic classification. Miller’s cognate density measure yields a symmetrical table based on the number of cognates each language pairing shares on a modified Swadesh-100 wordlist. However, no language has cognate

The surface form of arguments in natural discourse, theoretically freely chosen, is by no means arbitrary. Clear tendencies emerge when analyzing stretches of discourse. One such pattern concerns the different proportions of lexically realized arguments in A, as opposed to S and P, and has been explained by Du Bois through a set of underlying principles. The pattern has more recently been suggested

This paper presents a sketch of the segmental and prosodic phonology of Omagua, a highly endangered Tupí-Guaraní language of Peru, based on original fieldwork. After reviewing the classification, history, and sociolinguistic situation of the language, we describe phonemic consonant and vowel inventories, arguing especially for an underspecified nasal consonant that in some contexts surfaces as nasality

The multilingualism of the Vaupés region in Northwest Amazonia has drawn attention from scholars for decades. This paper addresses issues involving code-switching and code-mixing in this region. The claim has often been repeated that in spite of intense multilingualism, code-mixing does not occur. I report findings that show this is not the case. This study is based on fieldwork in a Desano community

Mirativity is generally portrayed as a report of information that is surprising to the speaker. In this study I argue for a broader characterization of mirativity which accounts for the grammatical expression of surprise on the part of discourse participants, whether speaker, addressee, or narrative participant. Surprise value is communicated in South Conchucos Quechua via three pairs of grammatical

Bridging constructions—a means of linking sentences within narratives—can be of two kinds. Recapitulating linkage may involve repetition of the last clause of the preceding sentence as the first, dependent clause of the following one. Summary linkage involves using a generic verb in a dependent clause summarizing the actions of the previous sentence. Both have been referred to with various terms, including

This paper examines the morphology of verbs in the Northern branch of the Jê language family, paying particular attention to verbal finiteness, a pervasive category in the family that exhibits a number of morphological complexities. We argue that a number of Proto-Northern Jê verbs whose nonfinite forms have been traditionally regarded as suppletive can be shown to be derived through morphophonological

This article is an empirical examination of prosodic correlates used to demarcate discourse units in a collection of Diné bizaad narratives. This study builds on observations of prosodic patterns in related Dene languages and evaluates the presence of hypothesized correlates of following pause, syllable lengthening, pitch lowering, and pitch reset at boundaries for intonation units and syntactic sentences

This essay analyzes the history and usage of degree modifiers and comparative constructions in Q’eqchi’ (Maya). It focuses on the role of mas (< Sp. más) and the function of the modern comparative construction (long thought to be a calque of its Spanish equivalent). In contrast to previous analyses, it shows that Q’eqchi’ mas does not function as a comparative (unlike Spanish más), but rather as a

Tupían languages typically mark evidentiality through freestanding particles located in a predicate- or clause-peripheral position. In Tuparí, however, non-witnessed evidentiality is realized by a bound verbal suffix (-pnẽ/psira). This article draws upon original fieldwork to offer a detailed description and analysis of -pnẽ/psira. I argue that using -pnẽ/psira presupposes commitment to the proposition

This paper describes the alignment system for verbal person-marking in Chitimacha, a language isolate of Louisiana. Using data from recently digitized versions of texts collected by Morris Swadesh in the 1930s, I show that Chitimacha exhibits a split alignment system with agent-patient alignment in the first person and nominative-accusative alignment in non-first persons. The agent-patient alternation

The Jodï are a small indigenous group of approximately 1,000 people living in relative isolation in the Venezuelan Sierra de Maigualida. Their language has generally been treated as an isolate or left unclassified in the language classification literature. However, different researchers have proposed that Jodï is related to the Cariban, Yanomaman, Sáliban, or “Makú” language families. In this article

This paper examines one specific syntactic construction in Q’eqchi’ (Mayan, K’ichean group). This construction involves a bare intransitive verb stem (with the suffix -k/-Vk that is optional in most contexts), and a dative pronoun cross-referencing the semantic subject. Therefore, this is an instance of noncanonical subject marking in a Mayan language. Although there is no specific morphological marker

Colonial Valley Zapotec (CVZ) refers to the language attested in a set of documents written in Oaxaca, Mexico, during the colonial period (1550–1810). In this paper I discuss the four primary conjunction strategies attested in CVZ documents: chela, huanee, =la, and asyndetic conjunction. These conjunction strategies are used interchangeably in CVZ throughout a wide time frame and geographic area. In

Olfactory impressions are said to be ineffable, but little systematic exploration has been done to substantiate this. We explored olfactory language in Huehuetla Tepehua—a Totonac-Tepehua language spoken in Hidalgo, Mexico—which has a large inventory of ideophones, words with sound-symbolic properties used to describe perceptuomotor experiences. A multi-method study found Huehuetla Tepehua has 45 olfactory

The Innu were known, up to a few decades ago, as Montagnais. They speak a number of dialects grouped together as “Innu-aimun” (henceforth Innu for short), itself part of a larger Cree-Innu-Naskapi dialect continuum spoken in Quebec and Labrador (Canada), with close ties to the other Cree dialects west of Quebec, across northern Ontario, and the Prairie Plains. The language is part of the Algonquian

The next two texts are from Joséphine Picard† who was born in 1918. She was a renowned healer and midwife. In 1980, Drapeau appointed Joséphine Bacon (identified as JB in the text), also from Pessamit, to make a six-hour recording in which Mrs. Picard recounts her life story. The two episodes presented here (“Adopted Animals” and “The Little Caribou”) are part of this recording. A first draft transcription

Côme St-Onge† (1908–1978) was a hunter and lived most of the year in the bush with his family. The original recording of “Sheshiliss” was made by Drapeau in the winter of 1975, and was transcribed by Drapeau and Rita Bacon in 1983. An illustrated version was published in Innu for the Pessamit schools by the band in 1987. This version was modified with respect to the original recording in order to satisfy

This paper describes and analyzes the typologically unique lateral system of Nivaĉle (Mataguayan). There is no lateral approximant in this language, but rather two lateral obstruents: the lateral fricative /ɬ/ and the complex segment /k͡l/. These two sounds behave differently in terms of both their phonotactic patterning and their morphophonemic alternations; they do not participate in any phonological

The linguistic encoding of landscape and seascape in Kalaallisut, an Unangan-Yupik-Inuit language spoken on the west coast of Greenland, exists within a complex domain of spatial language, coming together with a coastal-based orientation system and an extensive demonstrative system anchored in the geophysiography of Greenland. In this paper we describe the Kalaallisut landscape lexicon, unpacking its

This study examines whether the semantic primes of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) are attested in Denesųłiné (Athabaskan, Northern Canada). The NSM claims that the semantic primes are basic and universal meanings expressible as lexical units or morphemes in all languages. This study finds, however, that certain claimed semantic primes are problematic to posit in Dene, including be (somewhere)

Hierarchical argument marking systems have long been treated as exceptions in alignment typology since they do not follow the same logic as, for example, nominative-accusative systems in creating subsets of argument roles that are treated identically. A recent proposal by Witzlack-Makarevich and colleagues advocates for “exhaustive alignment” as a way around this problem. This paper applies this methodology

The stress assignment system of contemporary Mapudungun (a.k.a. Araucanian) has long been controversial. This paper reconsiders the system in light of morphological structure, contrasting the present-day data with the sparse but suggestive historical record spanning 1606–1916. I argue that Mapudungun has undergone changes to both the metrical and the morphological domains determining stress position

In 1902, Belmar published a list of San Gabriel Mixtepec Zapotec (SGMZ) words and phrases, the only record of this apparently dormant language. This paper presents Belmar’s SGMZ data and interprets his transcriptions to show that SGMZ is very similar to the Santa María Coatlán dialect of Coatec Zapotec, which is spoken some forty kilometers to the northeast, where it likely formed part of a historic

Ever since they were first described and named by Boas in the early twentieth century, the determiner-like elements known as “connectives” in the literature on Tsimshianic languages have posed a puzzle: though the two branches of the family (Maritime and Interior) are otherwise very closely related, their connective systems appear to be quite distinct. In this paper, I produce a comprehensive analysis

Blackfoot (Algonquian: Alberta) permits both morphologically transitive and intransitive verbs to take objects, but with different syntactic properties. This paper develops an analysis of the objects of morphologically intransitive verbs as pseudo-incorporated, in the sense introduced by Diane Massam. Diagnostic tests for the syntax and semantics of pseudo-incorporation are applied to objects of morphologically

The present study analyses the syntax and prosody of contrastive focus in K’ichee’ according to the bilingual language dominance of the speakers. Results of a production task reveal that although speakers use all of the syntactic constructions mentioned in the literature, speakers that are less dominant in K’ichee’ use in situ constructions at a higher rate. The results of the acoustic analysis show

Shipibo, a Panoan language spoken in Amazonian Peru, has a set of 31 monosyllabic forms, representing mostly body parts, which are phonologically attached to the front of verbs, adjectives and nouns. For most of these morphemes, noun roots designating body parts exist which are semantically similar and whose initial segments are the same. Consequently, previous scholars have analyzed these prefixed

This paper traces phonological developments and clarifies internal relationships in the Delta-California subgroup of the Yuman language family. It demonstrates that Delta-California Yuman comprises three subdivisions and at least eight languages, proposes a reorganization of the Yuman family tree that gives equal weight to the Delta-California and Pai-River subgroups, and concludes that the Yuman family

The Central Numic (Uto-Aztecan) dual number marking system on nouns and pronouns is of interest because even though most of the component morphemes involved in the system are reconstructible to Proto-Numic, the system itself is not. Indeed, while the reconstructible Proto-Numic system is rudimentary, the Central Numic system is robust and has expanded to the point that there are few environments where

In syllable reduction, the vowel of a nonfinal syllable deletes (… CV.CV …), resulting in the creation of a consonant cluster (… C.CV …) where the first consonant of such a cluster can be said to be phonetically simplified with respect to the original consonant. Ye’kwana presents some unique features of syllable reduction: (i) attested thus far only at morpheme boundaries, alternation of reducing syllables

In the south-central Andes, several researchers have documented series of numerical terms that some have attributed to a hitherto unknown language: Lengua X. Indeed, they are difficult to link, as a whole, with numerical series from the known languages of the area. This paper discusses the available information on these series and attempts to trace their origin. It is difficult to argue that they are

In this paper we propose a novel analysis of the Yucatec Maya determiner le … o’. Based on elicited and text data, we argue that this determiner may have demonstrative uses, but we show that it is primarily a definite article, since it can locate a referent in any of four domains of the universe of discourse (García Fajardo 1994). We compare the range of uses of le … o’ to those of other definite determiners

Relations between Arawakan and Guaicuruan groups in the Chaco region of South America have been widely discussed in ethnohistorical and anthropological sources. This paper offers the first systematic investigation of the linguistic effects of these interactions, relying on, and contributing to, the historical study of both language families. I discuss a number of nominal lexemes in Terena, the extant

Peru is a particularly interesting geographic area on which to focus as the wealth of languages spoken there spread over and between lowlands, foothills and highland communities. Geographically, Peru can be divided into the Amazon Basin, the Andes, and the coast. The overwhelming majority of the territory is composed of the Amazon Basin, which hosts the highest degree of linguistic diversity in the

A number of the world’s languages have a special morpheme marking a generic human participant or possessor, roughly translatable as ‘one’, or ‘someone’. In the course of language history, a generic marker may undergo semantic change and take on further functions—those of (a) a first person inclusive, (b) a marker of possessor coreferential with the subject of a clause, or (c) just a third person. The

This paper presents a reconstruction of the phonological inventory of Proto-Totonac-Tepehua (PTT) that differs significantly from previous reconstructions. The chief difference is that the PTT inventory proposed here includes a series of glottalized stops and affricates and does not include a series of laryngealized vowels. It is argued that it is easier to explain the correspondences among cognates

In this article, I study clefts in Otomi, a small family of languages of Mexico from the Oto-Manguean stock. Clefts represent an area of Otomi syntax that has not been previously reported on. I compare the clefts we find in two very different languages: Tilapa Otomi and Northern Otomi. Clefts in Otomi are based on the copular construction and have three typologically expected elements (i.e., a copula

This paper discusses objecthood in Kakataibo (Panoan, Peru) by studying three different types of non-subject arguments in the language: objects of transitive predicates, quasi-objects, and oblique objects. Quasi-objects are similar to objects because of their lack of overt case marking, but they appear with intransitive predicates. Oblique objects also appear with some intransitive predicates but differ

Research on the languages of the Americas has flourished over the past century, even while most of them have diminished in numbers of speakers. With the recognition of the importance of language and identity to health and well-being, many communities are implementing strategies to restore and revitalize their languages. Linguistics provides useful tools for documenting and revitalizing languages, and