Mirana, an endangered Witotoan language spoken in the Colombian Amazon region, has an inventory of over 60 noun class markers, most of which denote the shape of nominal referents. Class markers in this language are ubiquitous in their uses for derivational purposes in nouns and for agreement marking in virtually all other nominal expressions, such as pronouns, numerals, demonstratives, and relative clauses, as well as in verbs. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of this system by giving equal attention to its morphosyntactic, semantic, and discourse-pragmatic properties. The particular properties of this system raise issues in a number of ongoing theoretical discussions, in particular the typology of systems of nominal classification and the typology of reference tracking.

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Head Classes and Agreement Classes in the Mayali Dialect Chain

The structure and use of shape-based noun classes in Miraña (North West Amazon)

Mayali has four genders and five morphological classes, with formal identity between the gender prefixes and four of the morphological class prefixes. Gender and morphological class are assigned according to different but largely overlapping semantic principles. We analyze these partially overlapping systems within the NETWORK MORPHOLOGY framework; an implemented model demonstrates that the analysis gives the correct forms for the majority of nouns in a basic lexicon, and further extends to understanding assignment in the avoidance register. Our account depends on recognizing two different types of default: NORMAL CASE DEFAULT, the expected outcome in a given domain, and EXCEPTIONAL CASE DEFAULT, the last resort short of full lexical specification.

The Semantics of Gender in Mayali: Partially Parallel Systems and Formal Implementation

This paper has three goals. First we wish to elucidate the complex paradigms of Dalabon. In languages like Dalabon, which encode information about multiple pronominal arguments on adjacent slots on the verb, the two slots are frequently merged. The resultant set of combinations typically lies somewhere between an irregular paradigm and a set of forms derivable by combining subject and object elements according to some set of rules. These paradigms are potentially vast — in Dalabon, which has a rich set of person, number and kinship categories in its pronoun system, there are 102 possible subject/object combinations, each of which further distinguishes six tense/aspect/mood categories. Most languages of this type reduce the number of forms by widespread identities of form within the paradigm. However, it is not always clear whether the formal collapse is accidental homophony or principled syncretism.

Dalabon pronominal prefixes and the typology of syncretism: a Network Morphology analysis

Centro de investigaciones y estudios superiores en antropología social

nominals Yes Yes Yes No Yes No 2.3 The article The Mawng article is a small word that optionally occurs at the beginning of an NP and obligatorily occurs between nominals that are part of the same NP (except in determiner NPs see section 3.2). Thus the one form has two quite separate functions: as a marker of information status and as a linking article. The use of the NP-initial article is clearly influenced by information status but its distribution cannot simply be explained with reference to the categories 'definiteness' or 'specificity' as is the case with articles in many other languages. The article is clearly not a demonstrative as it cannot be used as a referring expression on its own and lacks spatial contrasts. Neither is the NP-initial article simply a gender marker as its distribution is related to information status. It 43 Although it appears formally similar to Arabic and Hebrew definite articles at first glance, because they can also occur before all elements of an NP (Ferguson and Barlow 1988).

Head Classes and Agreement Classes in the Mayali Dialect Chain

Citations

The structure and use of shape-based noun classes in Miraña (North West Amazon)

The Semantics of Gender in Mayali: Partially Parallel Systems and Formal Implementation

Dalabon pronominal prefixes and the typology of syncretism: a Network Morphology analysis

Centro de investigaciones y estudios superiores en antropología social

Agreement in Mawng: productive and lexicalised uses of agreement in an Australian language

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