A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia

Dados Bibliográficos

ID23398488
AutoresAlexandra Y Aikhenvald (0000-0003-1866-7869, La Trobe University, autor correspondente), A I͡U Aĭkhenvalʹd
Ano2003
Data de publicação2003-08-07
Open AccessSim
TipoBOOK
PeriódicoGrammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditoraCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/cbo9781107050952
OpenAlexW1594229016
Open LibraryOL34490701M
ISBN9781107050952
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas119
Referências citadas2

This is a comprehensive reference grammar of Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from a remote region in the northwest Amazonian jungle. Its speakers traditionally marry someone speaking a different language, and as a result most people are fluent in five or six languages. Because of this rampant multilingualism, Tariana combines a number of features inherited from the protolanguage with properties diffused from neighbouring but unrelated Tucanoan languages. Typologically unusual features of the language include: an array of classifiers independent of genders, complex serial verbs, case marking depending on the topicality of a noun, and double marking of case and of number. Tariana has obligatory evidentiality: every sentence contains a special element indicating whether the information was seen, heard, or inferred by the speaker, or whether the speaker acquired it from somebody else. This grammar will be a valuable source-book for linguists and others interested in natural languages.

Geography · Grammar · Linguistics · Multilingualism · Natural language processing · Noun · Possessive · Sentence · Computer Science · Language and cultural evolution · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation