The paper investigates the inventory of nominalizing forms and examines restrictions on the morph... more The paper investigates the inventory of nominalizing forms and examines restrictions on the morphosyntactic behavior of lexical and clausal nominalizations in Alto Perené (also called Ashéninka Perené), a Kampa Arawak language of Peru. It is shown that the deverbalization of lexical nominalizations is basically total. The substantivization cline of lexical nominalizations is characterized by various degrees of acquisition of nominal properties. Clausal nominalizations are found to retain aspect and realis marking and preserve argument structure. Clausal realis nominalizations display a variety of nominal characteristics such as spatial case, nominal plural number, and definiteness marking. Clausal irrealis nominalizations show highly restricted nominal properties. The relativization strategy is formed with the help of the participant nominalizers -riand -ni.
This chapter’s goal is to survey Ashaninka Satipo (Arawak) commanding communicative moves. It arg... more This chapter’s goal is to survey Ashaninka Satipo (Arawak) commanding communicative moves. It argues that imperatives form a paradigm consisting of the first person cohortative construction with the discourse particle tsame ‘come on’, second person canonical imperative construction characterized by a special intonation, and the third person jussive construction formed either with the intentional =ta on the lexical verb or on the copula kant ‘be this way’. In positive commands, the verbs are inflected for irrealis. The canonical imperative has a negative counterpart, whereas the cohortative and jussive verb forms lack them. While commanding, conversationalists tend to select specific linguistic resources which reflect their group membership status. Social equals have recourse to the same linguistic means as conversationalists in superior roles, but they also use the ‘want’ and ‘wish’ constructions and counter-assertive pronouns. The basic second person imperative forms are employed irrespective of the social status.
... 10 AuA muw Mundari a-te Abl -te Inst AuA hoc Ho e-te -te Abl All Inst Kar kat Georgian -it In... more ... 10 AuA muw Mundari a-te Abl -te Inst AuA hoc Ho e-te -te Abl All Inst Kar kat Georgian -it Inst -i(t)-dan Abl 8. ablative-ergative LG Eth Language morpheme Abl Elat Agen Erg Ades Loc All Dat Ben Com Inst Comp Other ST gvr Gurung -d(i) Abl Erg ST lep Lepcha -nun Abl Erg 9g. ...
Gender-switching strategies in the activity of tsinampantsi 'joking' among Northern Kampa Arawaks of Peru, 2019
Among Northern Kampas, the linguistically creative production of tsinam-pantsi by non-kin and aff... more Among Northern Kampas, the linguistically creative production of tsinam-pantsi by non-kin and affines intends-apart from having fun-to initiate an intimate relationship or affirm the intimacy of the existing interpersonal relationship. Northern Kampa participants of tsinampantsi 'joking' often resort to gender-switching strategies for jocular effects. Creatively playing with linguistic gender marking is characteristic of tsinampantsi-joking conduct. The study's findings revealed that there are variable lexicogrammatical means for accomplishing the man > woman gender switch. Two basic gender switching strategies are deployed: manipulation of person marking indexes and deployment of derivational morphology. The verbal person marking strategy is the most basic and most common means of indicating gender switches, whereas derivational morphology functions as a supplementary technique. In gender reversals, participation structure (production and reception roles) is predominantly coded by third person (other-role) markers on the verb. The woman > man direction of gender reversals is uncommon in joking sequences.
Documenting ritual songs: Best practices for preserving the ambiguity of Alto Perené (Arawak) shamanic pantsantsi 'singing', 2019
Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the paper explores the ways of interpreting and translating a sha... more Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the paper explores the ways of interpreting and translating a shamanic pantsantsi song by a fieldworker and Alto Perené (a.k.a Ashéninka Perené) language workers. The language's vitality is on a steep downward trajectory. Currently, it is spoken by a few hundred people. Aiming to create a thorough record of shamanic singing for the purpose of Alto Perené preservation , the fieldworker grapples with various stumbling blocks. Among them are the absence of shamans as an institution, the simulative setting of audio and video recordings, the inaccessibility of the text meanings to language consultants, and the non-definitiveness of the translated text. The shamanic language is manipulated in various ways to make it distinct from the profane speech of community members. The manipulative strategies include the singer's allusions to the preda-tion and conviviality schemes, prosodic repetitions, lexical and morphosyntactic manipulations, and voice masking. The meaning of the pantsantsi text eludes the non-indigenous fieldworker unless she collaborates with highly proficient language speakers, devotes many years to the committed study of the research language , possesses a good knowledge of the culture-specific background, and draws on multiple sources of translation.
The paper presents a pioneering analysis of the yes/no interrogative intonation of Satipo Ashanin... more The paper presents a pioneering analysis of the yes/no interrogative intonation of Satipo Ashaninka, a highly synthetic Kampa Arawak language spoken by approximately 10, 000 people in the Satipo Province of Peru. The study demonstrates the diversity of the Satipo Ashaninka interrogative intonation types, most of which are combined with the language's morphosyntactic resources. Yes/no interrogative intonation types comprise low and high right edge boundary tones. The results confirm the findings of other studies across synthetic indigenous languages by providing evidence that yes/no interrogative intonation does not necessarily have a rising pitch contour.
Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in lowland Peru, this study examines interactional func... more Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in lowland Peru, this study examines interactional functions of Northern Kampa (Arawak) lip funneling gestures. The study has shown that lip funnels have two functions, spatial deictic and upgrading. Spatial deictic lip funnels orient the addressee to a referential target in acts of direct and deferred ostension and abstract pointing; they are accompanied with aligned gaze and coupled with a variety of lexical items (although they need not be). Spatial deictic lip funnels are intense, sometimes held for the duration of the entire utterance. The second function of lip funnels is to amplify the speaker's claim to epistemic authority in upgraded responses. In the upgrading function, lip funnels are paired with a limited range of grammatical constructions (negative-interrogative, polar focus and exhaustive focus); the gesturer's gaze is directed at the recipient, or eyes are shut. Nasalization of vowels is in complementary distribution with eye shutting. 'Upgrading' lip funnels are transitory facial actions, normally lasting a split second.
This study examines the interaction of contrastive focus-marking with nominalization in bisected ... more 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 airmative 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.
Recent typological studies of clausal negation not only focus on the basic standard negation stra... more Recent typological studies of clausal negation not only focus on the basic standard negation strategies that languages use to negate declarative verbal main clauses but also discuss typol- ogy of asymmetric negation in declaratives. Asymmetric negatives may have anges in the form of the lexical verb, tense and aspect marking or other clausal modifications while sym- metric negatives differ from the affirmatives only due to the addition of (a) negative marker(s). Here it is shown that asymmetric negatives in Mea (Narrow Grassfields Bantu), similar to a majority of other languages, include modifications of the perfective forms; symmetric negative constructions are prevalent, another cross-linguistically common phenomenon in negation. is paper supports findings of cross-linguistic studies on negation by showing that Mea extends its standard negation strategy to other environments su as subordinate, existential, locative, possessive, and non-verbal clauses but uses non-standard neg...
ABSTRACT This research is a first attempt to survey ideophones in the Amazonian Arawak language A... more ABSTRACT This research is a first attempt to survey ideophones in the Amazonian Arawak language Alto Perené (a.k.a. Ashéninka Perené). Based on fieldwork data, this study shows that ideophones constitute a separate class of words in Alto Perené in view of their distinctive phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties. The study also draws on primary and secondary data from three other genetically related neighboring language varieties (Ashéninka Pichis, Asháninka Tambo-Ene, and Kakinte) to demonstrate a moderate degree of interdialect variation. The study suggests the possibility that the following properties may be regional affinities: non-canonical stress assignment; word class-specific reduplication of the word-final syllabic segments -ri, -re, -ro, -pi, -po expressing spatial distribution, intensity, or repeated/durative/open-ended temporal structure of the reported event; productive (V)k-suffixation contributing to the expression of punctual/perfective aspect; syntactic functions of appositional or coordinated predicate, co-verb, complement, and adverb; prevalence of Gestalt packaging of sensory events; a dearth of ideophones describing states.
Cadernos de Etnolingüística (ISSN 1946-7095), 2010
Abstract: This paper proposes a practical orthography for Ashéninka Perené (Arawak) by looking at... more Abstract: This paper proposes a practical orthography for Ashéninka Perené (Arawak) by looking at the existing orthographies of the language. Focusing on the SIL-recommended linguistic orthography, native language consultants' ad hoc writing samples, and the ...
Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in lowland Peru, this study examines linguistic resourc... more Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in lowland Peru, this study examines linguistic resources used for coding agreements in Alto Perené (Arawak) conversation. The study draws on the anthropological tradition of conversation analysis-informed ethnographies. The investigation of agreeing responses is limited to those which allow a projectedly 'knowing', or K-plus, participant to raise his or her epistemic status from the sequentially second position. It is shown that Alto Perené K-plus response formats include the evaluative property word kametsari 'good' with an intensifier and/or upgraded prosody, argument focus structures, two polarity verbs ari 'it is the case' and omapero 'it is true', and the verb ñakiro 'as you can see'. This analysis demonstrates a relationship between the Alto Perené practices of expressing K-plus agreements and the collateral effects arising from the particular meanings and functions of structures which are used for accomplishing an agreeing action.
Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of landscape terms in an Amazonian Arawak language of Peru, t... more Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of landscape terms in an Amazonian Arawak language of Peru, this study examines landscape categorization among the Alto Perené Kampa. It is shown that Alto Perené culture-specific themes of ecological categorization, namely substance and shape, form a covert template of semantic generalizations that structure the landscape vocabulary set. The continuous semantic strands of landscape terms are substance and shape of geomorphic features, either expressed by simplex terms or combinations of simplex terms with various classifiers. The comprehensive hydrological and topographic vocabulary is argued to reflect Alto Perené Arawaks’ particular concern with the affordances of the surrounding landscape and their spiritual preoccupations.
The paper investigates the inventory of nominalizing forms and examines restrictions on the morph... more The paper investigates the inventory of nominalizing forms and examines restrictions on the morphosyntactic behavior of lexical and clausal nominalizations in Alto Perené (also called Ashéninka Perené), a Kampa Arawak language of Peru. It is shown that the deverbalization of lexical nominalizations is basically total. The substantivization cline of lexical nominalizations is characterized by various degrees of acquisition of nominal properties. Clausal nominalizations are found to retain aspect and realis marking and preserve argument structure. Clausal realis nominalizations display a variety of nominal characteristics such as spatial case, nominal plural number, and definiteness marking. Clausal irrealis nominalizations show highly restricted nominal properties. The relativization strategy is formed with the help of the participant nominalizers -riand -ni.
This chapter’s goal is to survey Ashaninka Satipo (Arawak) commanding communicative moves. It arg... more This chapter’s goal is to survey Ashaninka Satipo (Arawak) commanding communicative moves. It argues that imperatives form a paradigm consisting of the first person cohortative construction with the discourse particle tsame ‘come on’, second person canonical imperative construction characterized by a special intonation, and the third person jussive construction formed either with the intentional =ta on the lexical verb or on the copula kant ‘be this way’. In positive commands, the verbs are inflected for irrealis. The canonical imperative has a negative counterpart, whereas the cohortative and jussive verb forms lack them. While commanding, conversationalists tend to select specific linguistic resources which reflect their group membership status. Social equals have recourse to the same linguistic means as conversationalists in superior roles, but they also use the ‘want’ and ‘wish’ constructions and counter-assertive pronouns. The basic second person imperative forms are employed irrespective of the social status.
... 10 AuA muw Mundari a-te Abl -te Inst AuA hoc Ho e-te -te Abl All Inst Kar kat Georgian -it In... more ... 10 AuA muw Mundari a-te Abl -te Inst AuA hoc Ho e-te -te Abl All Inst Kar kat Georgian -it Inst -i(t)-dan Abl 8. ablative-ergative LG Eth Language morpheme Abl Elat Agen Erg Ades Loc All Dat Ben Com Inst Comp Other ST gvr Gurung -d(i) Abl Erg ST lep Lepcha -nun Abl Erg 9g. ...
Gender-switching strategies in the activity of tsinampantsi 'joking' among Northern Kampa Arawaks of Peru, 2019
Among Northern Kampas, the linguistically creative production of tsinam-pantsi by non-kin and aff... more Among Northern Kampas, the linguistically creative production of tsinam-pantsi by non-kin and affines intends-apart from having fun-to initiate an intimate relationship or affirm the intimacy of the existing interpersonal relationship. Northern Kampa participants of tsinampantsi 'joking' often resort to gender-switching strategies for jocular effects. Creatively playing with linguistic gender marking is characteristic of tsinampantsi-joking conduct. The study's findings revealed that there are variable lexicogrammatical means for accomplishing the man > woman gender switch. Two basic gender switching strategies are deployed: manipulation of person marking indexes and deployment of derivational morphology. The verbal person marking strategy is the most basic and most common means of indicating gender switches, whereas derivational morphology functions as a supplementary technique. In gender reversals, participation structure (production and reception roles) is predominantly coded by third person (other-role) markers on the verb. The woman > man direction of gender reversals is uncommon in joking sequences.
Documenting ritual songs: Best practices for preserving the ambiguity of Alto Perené (Arawak) shamanic pantsantsi 'singing', 2019
Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the paper explores the ways of interpreting and translating a sha... more Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the paper explores the ways of interpreting and translating a shamanic pantsantsi song by a fieldworker and Alto Perené (a.k.a Ashéninka Perené) language workers. The language's vitality is on a steep downward trajectory. Currently, it is spoken by a few hundred people. Aiming to create a thorough record of shamanic singing for the purpose of Alto Perené preservation , the fieldworker grapples with various stumbling blocks. Among them are the absence of shamans as an institution, the simulative setting of audio and video recordings, the inaccessibility of the text meanings to language consultants, and the non-definitiveness of the translated text. The shamanic language is manipulated in various ways to make it distinct from the profane speech of community members. The manipulative strategies include the singer's allusions to the preda-tion and conviviality schemes, prosodic repetitions, lexical and morphosyntactic manipulations, and voice masking. The meaning of the pantsantsi text eludes the non-indigenous fieldworker unless she collaborates with highly proficient language speakers, devotes many years to the committed study of the research language , possesses a good knowledge of the culture-specific background, and draws on multiple sources of translation.
The paper presents a pioneering analysis of the yes/no interrogative intonation of Satipo Ashanin... more The paper presents a pioneering analysis of the yes/no interrogative intonation of Satipo Ashaninka, a highly synthetic Kampa Arawak language spoken by approximately 10, 000 people in the Satipo Province of Peru. The study demonstrates the diversity of the Satipo Ashaninka interrogative intonation types, most of which are combined with the language's morphosyntactic resources. Yes/no interrogative intonation types comprise low and high right edge boundary tones. The results confirm the findings of other studies across synthetic indigenous languages by providing evidence that yes/no interrogative intonation does not necessarily have a rising pitch contour.
Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in lowland Peru, this study examines interactional func... more Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in lowland Peru, this study examines interactional functions of Northern Kampa (Arawak) lip funneling gestures. The study has shown that lip funnels have two functions, spatial deictic and upgrading. Spatial deictic lip funnels orient the addressee to a referential target in acts of direct and deferred ostension and abstract pointing; they are accompanied with aligned gaze and coupled with a variety of lexical items (although they need not be). Spatial deictic lip funnels are intense, sometimes held for the duration of the entire utterance. The second function of lip funnels is to amplify the speaker's claim to epistemic authority in upgraded responses. In the upgrading function, lip funnels are paired with a limited range of grammatical constructions (negative-interrogative, polar focus and exhaustive focus); the gesturer's gaze is directed at the recipient, or eyes are shut. Nasalization of vowels is in complementary distribution with eye shutting. 'Upgrading' lip funnels are transitory facial actions, normally lasting a split second.
This study examines the interaction of contrastive focus-marking with nominalization in bisected ... more 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 airmative 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.
Recent typological studies of clausal negation not only focus on the basic standard negation stra... more Recent typological studies of clausal negation not only focus on the basic standard negation strategies that languages use to negate declarative verbal main clauses but also discuss typol- ogy of asymmetric negation in declaratives. Asymmetric negatives may have anges in the form of the lexical verb, tense and aspect marking or other clausal modifications while sym- metric negatives differ from the affirmatives only due to the addition of (a) negative marker(s). Here it is shown that asymmetric negatives in Mea (Narrow Grassfields Bantu), similar to a majority of other languages, include modifications of the perfective forms; symmetric negative constructions are prevalent, another cross-linguistically common phenomenon in negation. is paper supports findings of cross-linguistic studies on negation by showing that Mea extends its standard negation strategy to other environments su as subordinate, existential, locative, possessive, and non-verbal clauses but uses non-standard neg...
ABSTRACT This research is a first attempt to survey ideophones in the Amazonian Arawak language A... more ABSTRACT This research is a first attempt to survey ideophones in the Amazonian Arawak language Alto Perené (a.k.a. Ashéninka Perené). Based on fieldwork data, this study shows that ideophones constitute a separate class of words in Alto Perené in view of their distinctive phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties. The study also draws on primary and secondary data from three other genetically related neighboring language varieties (Ashéninka Pichis, Asháninka Tambo-Ene, and Kakinte) to demonstrate a moderate degree of interdialect variation. The study suggests the possibility that the following properties may be regional affinities: non-canonical stress assignment; word class-specific reduplication of the word-final syllabic segments -ri, -re, -ro, -pi, -po expressing spatial distribution, intensity, or repeated/durative/open-ended temporal structure of the reported event; productive (V)k-suffixation contributing to the expression of punctual/perfective aspect; syntactic functions of appositional or coordinated predicate, co-verb, complement, and adverb; prevalence of Gestalt packaging of sensory events; a dearth of ideophones describing states.
Cadernos de Etnolingüística (ISSN 1946-7095), 2010
Abstract: This paper proposes a practical orthography for Ashéninka Perené (Arawak) by looking at... more Abstract: This paper proposes a practical orthography for Ashéninka Perené (Arawak) by looking at the existing orthographies of the language. Focusing on the SIL-recommended linguistic orthography, native language consultants' ad hoc writing samples, and the ...
Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in lowland Peru, this study examines linguistic resourc... more Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in lowland Peru, this study examines linguistic resources used for coding agreements in Alto Perené (Arawak) conversation. The study draws on the anthropological tradition of conversation analysis-informed ethnographies. The investigation of agreeing responses is limited to those which allow a projectedly 'knowing', or K-plus, participant to raise his or her epistemic status from the sequentially second position. It is shown that Alto Perené K-plus response formats include the evaluative property word kametsari 'good' with an intensifier and/or upgraded prosody, argument focus structures, two polarity verbs ari 'it is the case' and omapero 'it is true', and the verb ñakiro 'as you can see'. This analysis demonstrates a relationship between the Alto Perené practices of expressing K-plus agreements and the collateral effects arising from the particular meanings and functions of structures which are used for accomplishing an agreeing action.
Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of landscape terms in an Amazonian Arawak language of Peru, t... more Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of landscape terms in an Amazonian Arawak language of Peru, this study examines landscape categorization among the Alto Perené Kampa. It is shown that Alto Perené culture-specific themes of ecological categorization, namely substance and shape, form a covert template of semantic generalizations that structure the landscape vocabulary set. The continuous semantic strands of landscape terms are substance and shape of geomorphic features, either expressed by simplex terms or combinations of simplex terms with various classifiers. The comprehensive hydrological and topographic vocabulary is argued to reflect Alto Perené Arawaks’ particular concern with the affordances of the surrounding landscape and their spiritual preoccupations.
Alto Perené speakers reside in the foothills of the eastern Andes and the western fringe of the A... more Alto Perené speakers reside in the foothills of the eastern Andes and the western fringe of the Amazonian jungle of Peru. The highly endangered language is spoken by about three hundred people. There are a few hundred more people with varying degrees of proficiency in the language. This trilingual dictionary is a result of eight years of the author’s fieldwork in the Native community located in Chanchamayo Province of Peru. The dictionary is produced in close collaboration with fifty native speakers. It collects and preserves the most critical culture-specific information about the community’s traditional ways of living. The introductory prefaces in Spanish and English present a brief linguistic profile of the language. The dictionary provides glossaries in English and Spanish and links to online materials. It contains over 900 entries which are amply illustrated by natural language data from field recordings, and by numerous drawings and photographs. The readership includes Alto Perené learners, bilingual teachers, linguists and anthropologists.
Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the research community, the book is a focused exploration of di... more Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the research community, the book is a focused exploration of discourse patterns of Alto Perené Arawak, with emphasis on conversational structures. The book’s methodological scaffold is based on proposals and insights from multiple research fields, such as comparative conversation analysis, sociology, interactional linguistics, documentary linguistics, anthropological linguistics, and prosodic typology. The interactional patterns of a small Arawak language of Peru are shown to share the common infrastructure reported in the organization of conversation across other languages and cultures. Yet the analysis demonstrates a variety of unique nuances in the organization of interactional behavior of Alto Perené Arawak participants. The peculiarities observed are attributed to the language-specific semiotic resources and participants’ orientation to the local cultural norms.
The talk outlines key issues pertaining to the Rekinniki Koryak phonological inventory and phonot... more The talk outlines key issues pertaining to the Rekinniki Koryak phonological inventory and phonotactics, and discusses phonotactic constraints on the distribution of the lateral approximant.
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Papers by Elena Mihas
introductory prefaces in Spanish and English present a brief linguistic profile of the language. The dictionary provides glossaries in English and Spanish and links to online materials. It contains over 900 entries which are amply illustrated by natural language data from field recordings, and by numerous drawings and photographs. The readership includes Alto Perené learners, bilingual teachers, linguists and anthropologists.
scaffold is based on proposals and insights from multiple research fields, such as comparative conversation analysis, sociology, interactional linguistics, documentary linguistics, anthropological linguistics, and prosodic typology. The interactional patterns of a small Arawak language of Peru are shown to share the common infrastructure reported in the organization of conversation across other languages and cultures. Yet the analysis demonstrates a variety of unique nuances in the organization of interactional behavior of Alto Perené Arawak participants. The peculiarities observed are attributed to the language-specific semiotic resources and participants’ orientation to the local cultural norms.