‘Body’ and the relationship between verb and participants

Heine and Kuteva (2004) list ‘reflexive’, ‘middle’, and ‘reciprocal’ as functions grammaticalized from the noun ‘body’ across languages. The present study, based on data from Pero (West Chadic), demonstrates the grammaticalization of one additional function, namely that of indicating that the object of the verb does not undergo a change in form, place, existential status (emergence or disappearance), or internal state. Most of the natural data indicates that the object in question is either a human or a story character with human attributes. The existence of this function in turn allows us to explain when third person object pronouns are used in Pero and when they are not used. The use of object pronouns is the outcome of the coding of semantic relations between the verbal predicate and arguments.