This study examines the correlations between possessive semantic relations and construction types in Kukama-Kukamiria (Amazon of Peru). The language does not have lexical verbs such as ‘have’, ‘belong,’ or a copula to predicate ownership. Yet possession can be inferred from other constructions,… read more
Some linguistic structures found in Amazonian Spanish tend to be associated by and large with a rural variety spoken by people frequently depicted as indigenous. However, direct observations indicate that most of these features are pervasive among speakers across the social spectrum. What, then,… read more
In Kokama-Kokamilla (KK), ditransitive constructions — i.e. syntactic units that profile three participants and contain two non-subject arguments — do not exist as a distinct type relative to transitives. KK shows both indirective and secundative alignment types (Haspelmath 2004, Dryer 1986, 2006),… read more