Bolivia-Paraná languages, a sub-branch of the Arawakan language family comprising varieties of Baure, Mojeño, Paunaka and Terena, all display a set of classifiers. These morphemes often denote the shape or consistency of referents. The same set of classifiers appears in several morphosyntactic contexts (e.g. on numerals, verbs or on nouns), which is an areal feature found in many Amazonian languages (Aikhenvald, 2000). However, they are not obligatory in most contexts, which raises the question what the conditions for their use in discourse are in Bolivia-Paraná languages.
After a general introduction of the classifier systems in these languages, the main focus of the talk will be on the use of Bolivia-Paraná classifiers in texts, an often neglected topic in classifier studies, which frequently concentrate on semantic questions (an exception to this being e.g. Contini-Morava & Kilarski, 2013 on discourse functions of nominal classification and Rose, 2019 on the use of verbal classifiers in discourse in Mojeño Trinitario). The talk will present cross-linguistic observations of classifiers in discourse as well as a pilot study of a parallel corpus, which gives insights in the frequency and the functions of Bolivia-Paraná classifiers in texts.
References :
Aikhenvald, A. Y. (2000). Classifiers: A typology of noun categorization devices. Oxford linguistics. Oxford University Press.
Contini-Morava, E., & Kilarski, M. (2013). Functions of nominal classification. Language Sciences, 40, 263–299.
Rose, F. (2019, April 18). The functions of Mojeño Trinitario verbal classifiers in discourse. DDL, CNRS. Nominal Categorization Workshop, Lyon.
Zoom link: https://cnrs.zoom.us/j/91391940782?pwd=bmxuSGJ6eElub0hQUW8wODZBVW1OQT09
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