Article published in:

Studies in Language
Vol. 40:2 (2016) ► pp. 414–456

Contrastive focus-marking and nominalization in Northern Kampa (Arawak) of Peru

Elena Mihas

This study examines the interaction of contrastive focus-marking with nominalization in bisected contrastive focus constructions of Alto Perené, a Kampa Arawak language of Peru. It also investigates morphosyntactic means of contrastive focus-marking in two neighboring Kampa languages, Ashéninka Pichis and Ashaninka Tambo. The languages are shown to employ various focus-marking strategies. The Alto Perené polar (truth value) focus construction shows a preference for nominalizing a lexical verb. In Ashaninka Tambo, the expression of polar and modal operator focus (the latter attested in negated clauses) does not require nominalization of the lexical verb, but in clefted content and polar questions and affirmative declarative clauses, nominalization is mandatory for the purpose of argument focusing. In Ashéninka Pichis, the argument focus-marking strategies include the syntactic movement of the focus constituent to the preverbal focus position and either an elision of the subject index on the verb, or inflecting the verb for stative aspect.

Keywords: Alto Perené, Kampa, Arawak, argument focus, polar focus, contrastive focus

Published online: 01 July 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.40.2.05mih

References

Adelaar, Willem & Pieter Muysken

2004 The languages of the Andes. (Cambridge Language Surveys.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.

1999 The Arawak language family. In R.M.W. Dixon & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.), The Amazonian languages, 65–106. (Cambridge Language Surveys.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Anderson, Ronald J.

1985 Cuentos folklóricos de los Asheninca, vol.1 (Comunidades y Culturas Peruanas 18). Yarinacocha: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.

1986a Cuentos folklóricos de los Asheninca, vol.2 (Comunidades y Culturas Peruanas 19). Yarinacocha: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.

1986b Cuentos folklóricos de los Asheninca, vol.3 (Comunidades y Culturas Peruanas 20). Yarinacocha:Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.

Birchall, Joshua

2014 Argument marking patterns in South American languages. Nijmegen: Radboud Universiteit dissertation.

Bickel, Baltasar

1999 Nominalization and focus constructions in some Kiranti languages. In Yogendra P. Yadava & Warren W. Glover (eds.), Topics in Nepalese linguistics, 271–296. Katmandu: Royal Nepal Academy.

Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, & Edward Finegan

1999 The Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman.

Bodley, John H.

2003 The Power of scale. A global history approach. New York/London: M.E. Sharpe.

Comrie, Bernard & Sandra A. Thompson

2007 Lexical nominalization. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, vol. 2, 334–381 (Language Typology & Syntactic Description). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Danielsen, Swintha

2011 The person paradigms in Bare and other Southern Arawak languages. International Journal of American Linguistics 77(4). 495–520.

Dik, Simon C.

1978 Functional grammar. (Linguistic Series 37). Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Dik, Simon C., Maria E. Hoffmann, Jan R. de Jong, Sie I. Djiang, Harry Stroomer, & Lourens de Vries

1981 On the typology of focus phenomena. In Teun Hoekstra, Harry van der Hulst & Michael Moortgat (eds.), Perspectives on functional grammar, 41–74. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.

Dik, Simon C.

1989 The theory of Functional Grammar. Part I, The structure of the clause (Functional Grammar Series 9). Dordrecht: Foris Publications.

1997 The theory of Functional Grammar. Part 2. Complex and derived constructions (Functional Grammar Series 21). Kees Hengeveld (ed.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Dixon, R.M.W.

2010 Basic Linguistic Theory. Grammatical topics, vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Doornenbal, Marius

2008 Nominalization in Bantawa. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 31(2). 67- 95.

Duff-Tripp, Martha

1997 Grammatica del idioma yanesha’ (amuesha). Lima: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.

É. Kiss, Katalin

1998 Identification focus versus information focus. Language 74(2). 245–273.

Fiedler, Ines

2012 Predicate-centered focus in Gbe. In Matthias Brenzinger & Ann-Maria Fehn (eds.), Proceedings of the 6^th World Congress on African Languages, Cologne August 17-21, 2009, 385–398. Köln: Verlag.

Fiedler, Ines & Anne Schwarz

(eds.) 2010 The expression of information structure: A documentation of its diversity across Africa (Typological Studies in Language 91). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Genetti, Carol

1994 A descriptive and historical account of the Dolakha Nevari dialect (Monumenta Serindica 24). Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.

Gijn, Rik van

2014 Subordination strategies in South America: nominalization. In Loretta O’Connor and Pieter Muysken (eds.), The native languages of South America: Origins, development, typology, 274–296. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gijn, Rik van, Katharina Haude & Pieter Muysken

2011 Subordination in South America: An overview. In Rik van Gijn, Katharina Haude & Pieter Muysken (eds.), Subordination in Native South American languages, 1–24. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Grunow-Hårsta, Karen

2009 Plurifunctionality in the Magar nominalization system. Nepalese Linguistics 24. 37–48.

2011 Adjectives and adjectivals in Magar. Himalayan Linguistics 10(1). 101- 126.

Gundel, Jeanette K. & Thorstein Fretheim

2004 Topic and focus. In Laurence Horn & Gregory Ward (eds.), The handbook of pragmatic theory, 174–196 (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics). Malden: Blackwell.

Güldemann, Tom

2003 Present progressive vis-à-vis predication focus in Bantu. Studies in Language 27. 323–360.

Hartmann, Katharina & Tonjes Veenstra

2013 Introduction. In Katharina Hartmann & Tonjes Veenstra (eds.), Cleft structures, 1–32. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Haspelmath, Martin

2013 Argument indexing: a conceptual framework. In Dik Bakker & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), Languages across boundaries: Studies in memory of Anna Siewierska, 209‒226. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Hengeveld, Kees

1992 Non-verbal predication: Theory, typology, diachrony (Functional Grammar Series 15). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Heritage John

2013 Epistemics in conversation. In Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers (eds.), The Handbook of conversation analysis, 370–394. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Hole, Daniel & Malte Zimmermann

2013 Cleft partitionings in Japanese, Burmese and Chinese. In Katharina Hartmann & Tonjes Veenstra (eds.), Cleft structures, 285–316. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Iirineane Tasorentsi. Oquenquetsatacotaqueri avincatsarite Jesoquirishito [El Nuevo Testamento en el idioma Asháninca] 1972 Lima: Editorial Sagradas Escrituras Para Todos.

Kindberg, Lee

1961 Independent and dependent sentence types in Campa. In Benjamin F. Elson & Juan Comas (eds.), A William Cameron Townsend en el vigésimoquinto aniversario del Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, 505–518. Mexico: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.

Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria

1993 Nominalizations. London: Routledge.

2006 Nominalization. In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of languages and linguistics, vol. 8, 652–59. Oxford: Elsevier.

Krasnoukhova, Olga

2012 The noun phrase in the languages of South America. Nijmegen: Radboud Universiteit dissertation.

Lambrecht, Knud

1994 Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2001 A framework for the analysis of cleft constructions. Linguistics 39(3). 463–516.

Lawrence, Aimee

2013 Inflectional verbal morphology in Matsiguenga. Austin: University of Texas MA thesis.

Malchukov, Andrei

2004 Nominalization/verbalization: Constraining a typology of transcategorial operations. Muenchen: Lincom Europa.

Malchukov, Andrei 2006 Constraining nominalization: Function/form competition. Linguistics 44(5). 973–1009.

Mihas, Elena

2014 Upper Perené Arawak narratives of history, landscape and ritual. Lincoln: Nebraska University Press.

2015 A grammar of Alto Perené (Arawak). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Michael, Lev

2008 Nanti evidential practice: Language, knowledge and social action in an Amazonian society. Austin, TX: University of Texas dissertation.

Noonan, Michael

1997 Versatile nominalizations. In Joan Bybee, John Haiman & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Essays on language function and language type; Dedicated to T. Givón, 373–394. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Payne, David

1991 A classification of Maipuran (Arawakan) languages based on shared lexical retentions. In Desmond Derbyshire & Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds.), Handbook of Amazonian languages, vol. 3, 355–499. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Payne, David & Judith Payne

2005 The pragmatics of split intransitivity in Asheninka. Revista Latinoamericana de Estidios Ethnolingüísticos 10. 37–56.

Payne, Thomas E.

1997 Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik

1985 A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.

Santos-Granero, Fernando

2002 Saint Christopher in the Amazon: child sorcery, colonialism, and violence among the Southern Arawak. Ethnohistory 49(3). 507–543.

Shaler, Dattie

1971 Identification of clause types and participant roles in Pajonal Campa. ms.

Shibatani, Masayoshi

2009 Elements of complex structures, where recursion isn’t: The case of relativization. In Talmy Givón & Masayoshi Shibatani (eds.), Syntactic complexity: Diachrony, acquisition, neuro-cognition, evolution, 163–168. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

2013 What can Japanese dialects tell us about the function and development of the nominalization particle ‘no’. Japanese/Korean Linguistics 20. 421–444.

Stivers, Tanya

2012 Mobilising response in interaction: a compositional view of questions. In Jan de Ruiter (ed.), Questions: formal, functional and interactional perspectives, 58–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Trask, Robert Lawrence

1992 A dictionary of grammatical terms in linguistics. London: Routledge.

Yap, Foong Ha, Karen Grunow-Hårsta & Janick Wrona

(eds.) 2011 Nominalization in Asian languages. Diacronic and typological perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Yap, Foong Ha & Stephen Matthews

2008 The development of nominalizers in East Asian and Tibeto-Burman languages. In María José López-Couso & Elena Seoane (eds.), Rethinking grammaticalization: New perspectives, 309–341. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Yap, Foong Ha, Stephen Matthews & Kaoru Horie

2004 From pronominalizer to pragmatic marker: Implication for unidirectionality from a crosslinguistic perspective. In Olga Fischer, Muriel Norde & Harry Perridon (eds.), Up and down the cline–The nature of grammaticalization, 137–168. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Vargas, Lita & Aída Candiotti

2004 Historias Ashaninkas para estar despiertos. Lima: Ministerio de Educación.

Watters, David E.

2008 Nominalization in Kiranti and Central Himalayish languages of Nepal. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 31(2). 1–43.

Watters, John R.

1979 Focus in Aghem: a study of its formal correlates and typology. In Larry Hyman (ed.), Aghem grammatical structure, 137–197. (Southern California Occasional Papers in Linguistics 7). Los Angeles: University of Southern California.

2010 Focus and the Ejagham verb system. In Ines Fielder & Anne Schwarz (eds.), The expression of information structure: A documentation of diversity across Africa, 349–375. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Wise, Mary Ruth

1986 Grammatical characteristics of Preandine Arawakan languages of Peru. In Desmond Derbyshire & Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds.), Handbook of Amazonian languages, 567–642. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Online publications

1984 Ocantacota Nonampi. Sobre mi pueblo. (Libro de Lectura 6, ashaninca.) Yarinacocha: Ministerio de Educación y Instituto Lingüístico de Verano. www-01.sil.org/americas/peru/pubs/asha-ll6.pdf.

1985 Icantacota peeraniniri. Cuentos de los antepasados. (Colección Literaria y Cultural 3, ashaninca.) Yarinacocha:Ministerio de Educación y Instituto Lingüístico de Verano. http://www.sil.org/americas/peru/show_work.asp?id=23313.

Cited by

Cited by other publications

No author info given

2017. In Conversational structures of Alto Perené (Arawak) of Peru [Studies in Language Companion Series, 181],

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 04 july 2020. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.