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Article published In:
The Evolution of Argument Coding Patterns in South American Languages
Edited by Antoine Guillaume and Spike Gildea
[Journal of Historical Linguistics 8:1] 2018
► pp. 95–127

From object nominalization to object focus

The innovative A-alignment in the Tuparian languages (Tupian family)

| Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi
| University of São Paulo

This article proposes that the divergent pattern of verb argument marking found in object focus clauses in the Tuparian branch of the Tupian family comes from the reanalysis of an object nominalization in a cleft construction. Based on the distribution of free and bound person markers, the major alignment pattern can be characterized as nominative-absolutive in simple clauses, with free pronouns expressing the nominative, whereas bound person markers express the absolutive. However, object focus clauses show a distinct alignment pattern: the ergative, and not the absolutive, is indexed by the bound markers on the verb. We present arguments for identifying the object nominalization as the source of this grammar in the object focus clause, showing also how this reanalysis resulted in the nominalizer morpheme and the person markers gaining new functions.

Keywords: internal reconstruction, nominalization, focus construction, morphosyntactic alignment, Tuparian languages, Tupian family
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The problem: Two different alignment types in the Tuparian languages
  • 3.Reconstruction of the relevant morphosyntax to Proto-Tupari
    • 3.1Tuparian personal pronouns: Free and bound forms
    • 3.2Main clause alignment
    • 3.3Argument structure of nominalizations
      • 3.3.1Action/circumstantial and subject nominalizations
      • 3.3.2Object nominalization
    • 3.4 tam with nominalizations
  • 4.Reanalysis of the object nominalization to the object focus construction
    • 4.1Object nominalization in a simple predicate nominal clause
    • 4.2Morphosyntactic innovations in the object focus construction
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 20 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.16025.gal
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