Indigenous Languages of Latin America Through Formal Lenses Speaker Series

The Indigenous Languages of Latin America Through Formal Lenses speaker series is dedicated to advancing the study of Indigenous languages in Latin America from a formal linguistic perspective. This series will focus on a wide range of linguistic domains, including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and their interfaces, bringing together leading scholars who contribute to the field through their innovative and rigorous research. This initiative also helps to bridge the gap between theoretical research and the preservation of linguistic diversity, promoting awareness of Indigenous languages’ critical role in the cultural and intellectual heritage of Latin America.

Our invited speakers for Spring 2025 are:

• Dr. Gabriel Martínez Vera from Newcastle University, focusing on Andean languages on February 7;
• Dr. Pilar Chamorro from University of Georgia, focusing on Tenetehára (Tupi-Guarani) on April 11; and
• Dr. Carol Rose Little from University of Oklahoma, focusing on Ch'ol (Mayan, Mexico) on April 18.

April 18, 2025 Abstract

The Syntax of Accompanying in Ch'ol

All languages have ways to express accompanying. Languages like English and Spanish use a preposition: I went to the party with María / Fui a la fiesta con María. Ch'ol, a Mayan language of southern Mexico, uses three strategies, none of which involve a preposition. The one most divergent from English shows agreement between the subject of the sentence and the person accompanying. For the same sentence in Ch'ol, Tsajñiyoñ tyi k'iñijel kik'oty xMaria, the predicate tsajñi has first person agreement (-yoñ), ik'oty introduces the person accompanying, Maria, and has first person agreement: the k- prefix of kik'oty. Essentially, the word corresponding to "with" in Ch'ol can mark both the subject of the sentence and the accompanier. I investigate this structure, exploring some of the different strategies that languages use to express how people do things with other people. I provide an analysis that hinges on a raising structure (an analysis for special verbs like "seem" and "likely" in English) arguing it can be extended to Ch'ol. I further discuss implications for theories of how agreement is derived.

April 11, 2025 Abstract

Analyzing event boundaries: Unveiling markers wɾa and pin in Wari'

Wari' is an isolating language with a rigid sequence of several inflectional particles (Everett & Kern 1997; Apontes 2015). The verbal structures are predicate-initial, incorporating a mandatory inflectional particle that marks the grammatical subject and object of the predicate, followed by optionally expressed nominal arguments, which establish VOS as the basic word order.

This project expands on previous descriptions of Wari'’s Tense-Aspect-Modality (TAM) system by providing a semantic analysis of two markers, wɾa and pin, previously described as marking a ‘preceding event’, and as a perfective marker respectively (Apontes 2015). Using original data we analyze wra and pin as conveying ingressive and egressive aspects respectively. Our data was collected via translation tasks in both directions, acceptability judgement tasks, and elicited production tasks (Bochnak & Matthewson 2015, 2020). The data come from multiple speakers of the Oro Waram Xijein, Oro Nao’, and Oro At linguistic varieties. Our consultants are bilingual speakers of Wari' and Portuguese and work as Wari' language teachers in schools within their respective communities.

We adopt a Neo-Reichenbachian framework (Klein 1994), in which temporal reference is the relationship between topic time (TT) and utterance time (UT), and aspectual reference is the relationship between TT and event time (ET). Tense is the grammatical expression of temporal reference, whereas viewpoint aspect is the grammatical expression of aspectual reference. We argue that wɾa locates the beginning of an event before TT (ETbegin < TT) while pin locates the end of an event either before or within TT (ETend < TTend). These two particles can appear independently or co-occur within a single clause. Notably, they do not relate TT to UT, indicating that they encode aspect rather than tense.

Example (1) shows wɾa with past temporal reference, resulting in the assertion that Awo started building the house before TT, which is constrained by the adverbial clause ka pe taɲ aldeia ‘when I was in the village’. In (2), the use of pin results in the assertion that Awo finished building the house within TT. (3) shows a sentence with both wɾa and pin, yielding the interpretation that Awo started and finished building the house before the speaker’s arrival; that is, the end of the building event is located before TT, demonstrating how the egressive aspect behaves in Wari'. (4-6) show the same sentences with future temporal reference, demonstrating that wɾa and pin do not encode tense because they can be used with multiple temporal references.

With this project we aim at providing a more in-depth understanding of Wari'’s TAM system through a detailed, fine-grained analysis of two of its particles. The Neo-Reichenbachian model has proven to be a satisfactory theoretical framework for explaining the data of Wari' so far. However, further research and analysis of additional particles are necessary to achieve a comprehensive understanding of Wari'’s entire TAM system.

February 7, 2025 Abstract

Verum in Saraguro Kichwa

This talk analyzes the enclitic =miin Saraguro Kichwa (a severely endangered language spoken in Saraguro, Ecuador) in matrix declarative clauses. Based on original fieldwork that documents an otherwise undocumented variety of Kichwa, this talk addresses two issues: (i) it provides an analysis of =mi as a verum marker in Saraguro Kichwa, (ii) it accounts for the discourse effects that sentences with =miin Saraguro Kichwa yield depending on where such an element surfaces in discussion that integrates contrastive (corrective) uses, as well as uses of verum with evidentials. The discussion adopts a discourse management approach that accounts for the focus-like effects that have been documented for =mi in the previous literature. The discussion further bears on the issue that =mi is usually analyzed as a mixed marker with (some of) evidential, verum, focus and discourse management functions in Quechuan, and thus sheds light on the more general debates in these domains.