Despite ample attention in the literature for alignment patterns and case frames more generally, ... more Despite ample attention in the literature for alignment patterns and case frames more generally, we know very little about how these elements of grammar spread from one language to another in a contact situation. Achieving a better understanding of this will help explain areal patterns in alignment and grammatical relation marking. In this contribution, we zoom in on a contact situation in the foothills of NorthWest Amazon, where languages of the Quechuan and Tukanoan families are in contact, and where previous authors have suggested that grammatical relation marking shows many potential contact effects. We find that, despite the absence of loanwords, abstract lexico-grammatical information associated with individual lexical items may spread from one language to another, especially within the class of sensation predicates. These can be characterized as lexically driven diffusion patterns, without formal borrowing, consistent with an overall characterization of the area's sociolinguistics as loanword-avoiding.
Clause-typing and evidentiality in Ecuadorian Siona PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van... more Clause-typing and evidentiality in Ecuadorian Siona PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden, op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof.mr. C.J.J.M. Stolker, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op donderdag 20 februari 2014 klokke 15.
This paper presents new experimental data on Quito Spanish /s/-voicing, which has attracted consi... more This paper presents new experimental data on Quito Spanish /s/-voicing, which has attracted considerable interest from theoretical phonologists owing to the overapplication of voicing to word-final pre-vocalic /s/. Bermú dez-Otero (2011) singles out Quito /s/-voicing as an important test case for discriminating between two competing theories of phonology-morphosyntax interactions : Output-output correspondence and cyclicity. Overapplication in /s/-voicing cannot be captured using correspondence relationship to a base form, which challenges Output-output correspondence as a theory of opacity. However, the argument only holds insofar as word-final prevocalic /s/-voicing is considered phonological, as Output-output correspondence can account for /s/-voicing assuming that it only applies in the phonetics (Colina 2009). We discuss the diverging empirical predictions concerning categoricity and gradience in the surface realisation of voicing processes. We further test these predictions based on acoustic data from seven speakers of Quito Spanish. Evidence from speech rate manipulations shows that some speakers produce more voicing during frication at normal speech rate, compared to fast, maintaining a stable voicing ratio across different speech rates. We argue that for these speakers, /s/-voicing is optional but categorical, and so it ought to be analysed as phonological. This result presents a [1] We would like to thank the speakers for their participation in the experiment. We are also grateful to Ricardo Bermú dez-Otero, Yuni Kim, Koen Sebregts and three anonymous Journal of Linguistics referees for their comments and suggestions. The research reported on in this article has been made possible thanks to a doctoral grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC, www.ahrc.ac.uk) to the first author, a grant from the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), project number 360-75-000, to the second and forth author, and a grant from the NWO, project number 360-70-320, to the third author.
Subject marking in the Western Tukanoan language Ecuadorian Siona is part of a complex system of ... more Subject marking in the Western Tukanoan language Ecuadorian Siona is part of a complex system of portmanteau morphology that also marks tense and clause type. This system shows a remarkable number of regularities that hint that it might be possible to tease apart these functions. Synchronically, it is problematic to posit distinct markers for each of the three relevant linguistic categories, but diachronically, it is likely that these categories were expressed by distinct markers. This article reconstructs the pathway of the formal merger of these three linguistic categories, comparing the expression of Ecuadorian Siona’s system to the expression of these categories in other Tukanoan languages.
The Spanish benefactive verbal periphrasis dar ‘give’ + gerund is unique to the Spanish spoken in... more The Spanish benefactive verbal periphrasis dar ‘give’ + gerund is unique to the Spanish spoken in Ecuador and it seems to have emerged in the historical Ecuadorian context of multilingualism. The analysis presented sheds light to the intricacies of the construction, taking into consideration the inherent aspect of the gerundial verb. Oral data was collected during two months of participant observation in Ecuador. The aspectual theoretical analysis of Verkuyl (1993), González (2003) and González and Verkuyl (2017) is applied to the data in order to determine the inherent aspectual value of the gerundial verb in the predications. The results show that there is an overwhelming use of terminative predications. Additionally, some predications that prima facie seem durative can be interpreted as terminative. This finding can be partially explained by particular linguistic phenomena only appearing in the Spanish in contact with Kichwa. Moreover, this study adds empirical proof of how relevant discourse is in aspectual representations.
Despite ample attention in the literature for alignment patterns and case frames more generally, ... more Despite ample attention in the literature for alignment patterns and case frames more generally, we know very little about how these elements of grammar spread from one language to another in a contact situation. Achieving a better understanding of this will help explain areal patterns in alignment and grammatical relation marking. In this contribution, we zoom in on a contact situation in the foothills of North-West Amazon, where languages of the Quechuan and Tukanoan families are in contact, and where previous authors have suggested that grammatical relation marking shows many potential contact effects. We find that, despite the absence of loanwords, abstract lexico-grammatical information associated with individual lexical items may spread from one language to another, especially within the class of sensation predicates. These can be characterized as lexically driven diffusion patterns, without formal borrowing, consistent with an overall characterization of the area’s sociolingu...
This study describes the nasal system in Ecuadorian Siona, an endangered Western Tukanoan languag... more This study describes the nasal system in Ecuadorian Siona, an endangered Western Tukanoan language spoken in the Ecuadorian province of Sucumbíos, using the Earbuds Method to analyze nasal events acoustically. This method provides a visual representation of the timing and duration of velum gestures through intensity (dB) and amplitude (Pa) fluctuations in the nasal and oral cavities. The studied events include nasal spreading (nasal harmony), triggers, targets, blockers, and transparent segments. Meanwhile, differences between nasal phonemes and nasal allophones are also identified along with the effects of morpheme boundaries during nasal spreading events. Results reveal that, unlike many other Tukanoan languages, /m/ and /n/ function as individual phonemes independent of their oral counterparts (/p̰/ & /t̰/). In addition, nasal harmony was identified as predominantly rightward spreading apart from syllable-delimited leftward spreading to vocoid segments. Moreover, suffixes respons...
Ecuadorian Siona is part of the western branch of the Tukanoan family. This family is known for i... more Ecuadorian Siona is part of the western branch of the Tukanoan family. This family is known for its complex evidential systems. Ecuadorian Siona differs from most other Tukanoan languages and from what has been attested crosslinguistically with respect to reportative evidentiality. The reportative does not behave as a declarative clause in Ecuadorian Siona. It groups together with interrogative clauses in the language. Reported evidentiality is marked by means of the verbal suffix –jã in combination with a specific subject agreement paradigm. This subject agreement paradigm is different from the declarative paradigm. The reportative clauses share the paradigm with interrogative clauses. This is illustrated in example (1):
(Main session) The verbal morphology of Cha’palaa, a Barbacoan language from coastal Ecuador, pro... more (Main session) The verbal morphology of Cha’palaa, a Barbacoan language from coastal Ecuador, provides a challenge for language description, with some interesting theoretical implications. During fieldwork, we observed a set of mutually-exclusive verb-final morphemes that form finite verbs, but whose meanings were difficult to identify. Unlike values such as tense or person that are relatively constant across contexts, the meanings of these morphemes become bleached outside of usage context, and consultants judge similar sentences with different finite morphemes as equivalent:
Ecuadorian Siona is a Western Tukanoan language spoken in eastern Ecuador. One of its remarkable ... more Ecuadorian Siona is a Western Tukanoan language spoken in eastern Ecuador. One of its remarkable features from a cross-linguistic perspective is its clause-typing system. Ecuadorian Siona has a special clause type for reports: the reportative. In the majority of the world’s languages, the reportative is considered to be an evidential category rather than a clause type. The reportative expresses the speaker’s access to the uttered information, namely, that it was obtained from someone else. The Ecuadorian Siona reportative is mutually exclusive with three other classical clause types that are part of its grammatical inventory: assertions (assertive clauses), questions (interrogative clauses) and orders (imperative clauses). The reason that the reportative can be considered as a separate clause type is that it has distinct subject agreement paradigms like the other clause types. Moreover, it exhibits clause-typing semantics. This dissertation presents an in-depth study of the clause-t...
Ecuadorian Siona (Western-Tukanoan) shows a rather distinct prosodic system from that described i... more Ecuadorian Siona (Western-Tukanoan) shows a rather distinct prosodic system from that described in other Tukanoan languages. Because of flat monotone responses produced during eliciting sessions in the field, we developed an on-the-spot method for data collection through loosely structured role-playing events involving the use of a script with lines specifically designed to elicit the utterance types. Skits were performed in pairs who stood at approximately 5 meters apart from each other to assure the dialog was vocalised as much as possible though without yelling. Each participant was accompanied by a researcher who provided the lines in Spanish e.g., “What are you doing?”. After each line was repeated in Siona, the other participant was asked to respond. Each participant wore a headmounted microphone and carried a digital recorder in a backpack to allow for mobility during the event. Results provided clear patterns for analysis that were not present during traditional elicitation ...
The Spanish benefactive verbal periphrasis dar ‘give’ + gerund is unique to the Spanish spoken in... more The Spanish benefactive verbal periphrasis dar ‘give’ + gerund is unique to the Spanish spoken in Ecuador and it seems to have emerged in the historical Ecuadorian context of multilingualism. The analysis presented sheds light to the intricacies of the construction, taking into consideration the inherent aspect of the gerundial verb. Oral data was collected during two months of participant observation in Ecuador. The aspectual theoretical analysis of Verkuyl (1993), González (2003) and González and Verkuyl (2017) is applied to the data in order to determine the inherent aspectual value of the gerundial verb in the predications. The results show that there is an overwhelming use of terminative predications. Additionally, some predications that prima facie seem durative can be interpreted as terminative. This finding can be partially explained by particular linguistic phenomena only appearing in the Spanish in contact with Kichwa. Moreover, this study adds empirical proof of how relev...
Subject marking in the Western Tukanoan language Ecuadorian Siona is part of a complex system of ... more Subject marking in the Western Tukanoan language Ecuadorian Siona is part of a complex system of portmanteau morphology that also marks tense and clause type. This system shows a remarkable number of regularities that hint that it might be possible to tease apart these functions. Synchronically, it is problematic to posit distinct markers for each of the three relevant linguistic categories, but diachronically, it is likely that these categories were expressed by distinct markers. This article reconstructs the pathway of the formal merger of these three linguistic categories, comparing the expression of Ecuadorian Siona’s system to the expression of these categories in other Tukanoan languages.
Despite ample attention in the literature for alignment patterns and case frames more generally, ... more Despite ample attention in the literature for alignment patterns and case frames more generally, we know very little about how these elements of grammar spread from one language to another in a contact situation. Achieving a better understanding of this will help explain areal patterns in alignment and grammatical relation marking. In this contribution, we zoom in on a contact situation in the foothills of NorthWest Amazon, where languages of the Quechuan and Tukanoan families are in contact, and where previous authors have suggested that grammatical relation marking shows many potential contact effects. We find that, despite the absence of loanwords, abstract lexico-grammatical information associated with individual lexical items may spread from one language to another, especially within the class of sensation predicates. These can be characterized as lexically driven diffusion patterns, without formal borrowing, consistent with an overall characterization of the area's sociolinguistics as loanword-avoiding.
Clause-typing and evidentiality in Ecuadorian Siona PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van... more Clause-typing and evidentiality in Ecuadorian Siona PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden, op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof.mr. C.J.J.M. Stolker, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op donderdag 20 februari 2014 klokke 15.
This paper presents new experimental data on Quito Spanish /s/-voicing, which has attracted consi... more This paper presents new experimental data on Quito Spanish /s/-voicing, which has attracted considerable interest from theoretical phonologists owing to the overapplication of voicing to word-final pre-vocalic /s/. Bermú dez-Otero (2011) singles out Quito /s/-voicing as an important test case for discriminating between two competing theories of phonology-morphosyntax interactions : Output-output correspondence and cyclicity. Overapplication in /s/-voicing cannot be captured using correspondence relationship to a base form, which challenges Output-output correspondence as a theory of opacity. However, the argument only holds insofar as word-final prevocalic /s/-voicing is considered phonological, as Output-output correspondence can account for /s/-voicing assuming that it only applies in the phonetics (Colina 2009). We discuss the diverging empirical predictions concerning categoricity and gradience in the surface realisation of voicing processes. We further test these predictions based on acoustic data from seven speakers of Quito Spanish. Evidence from speech rate manipulations shows that some speakers produce more voicing during frication at normal speech rate, compared to fast, maintaining a stable voicing ratio across different speech rates. We argue that for these speakers, /s/-voicing is optional but categorical, and so it ought to be analysed as phonological. This result presents a [1] We would like to thank the speakers for their participation in the experiment. We are also grateful to Ricardo Bermú dez-Otero, Yuni Kim, Koen Sebregts and three anonymous Journal of Linguistics referees for their comments and suggestions. The research reported on in this article has been made possible thanks to a doctoral grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC, www.ahrc.ac.uk) to the first author, a grant from the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), project number 360-75-000, to the second and forth author, and a grant from the NWO, project number 360-70-320, to the third author.
Subject marking in the Western Tukanoan language Ecuadorian Siona is part of a complex system of ... more Subject marking in the Western Tukanoan language Ecuadorian Siona is part of a complex system of portmanteau morphology that also marks tense and clause type. This system shows a remarkable number of regularities that hint that it might be possible to tease apart these functions. Synchronically, it is problematic to posit distinct markers for each of the three relevant linguistic categories, but diachronically, it is likely that these categories were expressed by distinct markers. This article reconstructs the pathway of the formal merger of these three linguistic categories, comparing the expression of Ecuadorian Siona’s system to the expression of these categories in other Tukanoan languages.
The Spanish benefactive verbal periphrasis dar ‘give’ + gerund is unique to the Spanish spoken in... more The Spanish benefactive verbal periphrasis dar ‘give’ + gerund is unique to the Spanish spoken in Ecuador and it seems to have emerged in the historical Ecuadorian context of multilingualism. The analysis presented sheds light to the intricacies of the construction, taking into consideration the inherent aspect of the gerundial verb. Oral data was collected during two months of participant observation in Ecuador. The aspectual theoretical analysis of Verkuyl (1993), González (2003) and González and Verkuyl (2017) is applied to the data in order to determine the inherent aspectual value of the gerundial verb in the predications. The results show that there is an overwhelming use of terminative predications. Additionally, some predications that prima facie seem durative can be interpreted as terminative. This finding can be partially explained by particular linguistic phenomena only appearing in the Spanish in contact with Kichwa. Moreover, this study adds empirical proof of how relevant discourse is in aspectual representations.
Despite ample attention in the literature for alignment patterns and case frames more generally, ... more Despite ample attention in the literature for alignment patterns and case frames more generally, we know very little about how these elements of grammar spread from one language to another in a contact situation. Achieving a better understanding of this will help explain areal patterns in alignment and grammatical relation marking. In this contribution, we zoom in on a contact situation in the foothills of North-West Amazon, where languages of the Quechuan and Tukanoan families are in contact, and where previous authors have suggested that grammatical relation marking shows many potential contact effects. We find that, despite the absence of loanwords, abstract lexico-grammatical information associated with individual lexical items may spread from one language to another, especially within the class of sensation predicates. These can be characterized as lexically driven diffusion patterns, without formal borrowing, consistent with an overall characterization of the area’s sociolingu...
This study describes the nasal system in Ecuadorian Siona, an endangered Western Tukanoan languag... more This study describes the nasal system in Ecuadorian Siona, an endangered Western Tukanoan language spoken in the Ecuadorian province of Sucumbíos, using the Earbuds Method to analyze nasal events acoustically. This method provides a visual representation of the timing and duration of velum gestures through intensity (dB) and amplitude (Pa) fluctuations in the nasal and oral cavities. The studied events include nasal spreading (nasal harmony), triggers, targets, blockers, and transparent segments. Meanwhile, differences between nasal phonemes and nasal allophones are also identified along with the effects of morpheme boundaries during nasal spreading events. Results reveal that, unlike many other Tukanoan languages, /m/ and /n/ function as individual phonemes independent of their oral counterparts (/p̰/ & /t̰/). In addition, nasal harmony was identified as predominantly rightward spreading apart from syllable-delimited leftward spreading to vocoid segments. Moreover, suffixes respons...
Ecuadorian Siona is part of the western branch of the Tukanoan family. This family is known for i... more Ecuadorian Siona is part of the western branch of the Tukanoan family. This family is known for its complex evidential systems. Ecuadorian Siona differs from most other Tukanoan languages and from what has been attested crosslinguistically with respect to reportative evidentiality. The reportative does not behave as a declarative clause in Ecuadorian Siona. It groups together with interrogative clauses in the language. Reported evidentiality is marked by means of the verbal suffix –jã in combination with a specific subject agreement paradigm. This subject agreement paradigm is different from the declarative paradigm. The reportative clauses share the paradigm with interrogative clauses. This is illustrated in example (1):
(Main session) The verbal morphology of Cha’palaa, a Barbacoan language from coastal Ecuador, pro... more (Main session) The verbal morphology of Cha’palaa, a Barbacoan language from coastal Ecuador, provides a challenge for language description, with some interesting theoretical implications. During fieldwork, we observed a set of mutually-exclusive verb-final morphemes that form finite verbs, but whose meanings were difficult to identify. Unlike values such as tense or person that are relatively constant across contexts, the meanings of these morphemes become bleached outside of usage context, and consultants judge similar sentences with different finite morphemes as equivalent:
Ecuadorian Siona is a Western Tukanoan language spoken in eastern Ecuador. One of its remarkable ... more Ecuadorian Siona is a Western Tukanoan language spoken in eastern Ecuador. One of its remarkable features from a cross-linguistic perspective is its clause-typing system. Ecuadorian Siona has a special clause type for reports: the reportative. In the majority of the world’s languages, the reportative is considered to be an evidential category rather than a clause type. The reportative expresses the speaker’s access to the uttered information, namely, that it was obtained from someone else. The Ecuadorian Siona reportative is mutually exclusive with three other classical clause types that are part of its grammatical inventory: assertions (assertive clauses), questions (interrogative clauses) and orders (imperative clauses). The reason that the reportative can be considered as a separate clause type is that it has distinct subject agreement paradigms like the other clause types. Moreover, it exhibits clause-typing semantics. This dissertation presents an in-depth study of the clause-t...
Ecuadorian Siona (Western-Tukanoan) shows a rather distinct prosodic system from that described i... more Ecuadorian Siona (Western-Tukanoan) shows a rather distinct prosodic system from that described in other Tukanoan languages. Because of flat monotone responses produced during eliciting sessions in the field, we developed an on-the-spot method for data collection through loosely structured role-playing events involving the use of a script with lines specifically designed to elicit the utterance types. Skits were performed in pairs who stood at approximately 5 meters apart from each other to assure the dialog was vocalised as much as possible though without yelling. Each participant was accompanied by a researcher who provided the lines in Spanish e.g., “What are you doing?”. After each line was repeated in Siona, the other participant was asked to respond. Each participant wore a headmounted microphone and carried a digital recorder in a backpack to allow for mobility during the event. Results provided clear patterns for analysis that were not present during traditional elicitation ...
The Spanish benefactive verbal periphrasis dar ‘give’ + gerund is unique to the Spanish spoken in... more The Spanish benefactive verbal periphrasis dar ‘give’ + gerund is unique to the Spanish spoken in Ecuador and it seems to have emerged in the historical Ecuadorian context of multilingualism. The analysis presented sheds light to the intricacies of the construction, taking into consideration the inherent aspect of the gerundial verb. Oral data was collected during two months of participant observation in Ecuador. The aspectual theoretical analysis of Verkuyl (1993), González (2003) and González and Verkuyl (2017) is applied to the data in order to determine the inherent aspectual value of the gerundial verb in the predications. The results show that there is an overwhelming use of terminative predications. Additionally, some predications that prima facie seem durative can be interpreted as terminative. This finding can be partially explained by particular linguistic phenomena only appearing in the Spanish in contact with Kichwa. Moreover, this study adds empirical proof of how relev...
Subject marking in the Western Tukanoan language Ecuadorian Siona is part of a complex system of ... more Subject marking in the Western Tukanoan language Ecuadorian Siona is part of a complex system of portmanteau morphology that also marks tense and clause type. This system shows a remarkable number of regularities that hint that it might be possible to tease apart these functions. Synchronically, it is problematic to posit distinct markers for each of the three relevant linguistic categories, but diachronically, it is likely that these categories were expressed by distinct markers. This article reconstructs the pathway of the formal merger of these three linguistic categories, comparing the expression of Ecuadorian Siona’s system to the expression of these categories in other Tukanoan languages.
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