MGL 68 A GRAMMAR OF AGUARUNA (IINIÁ CHICHAM) A GRAMMAR OF AGUARUNA Simon E. Overall Simon E. Overall This book is the fi rst published grammar of Aguaruna, known to its speakers as Iiniá Chicham, a Chicham (Jivaroan) language spoken by some 55,000 people in the northwest Peruvian Amazon. Aguaruna is typologically and historically signifi cant because of its location in the eastern foothills of the Andes, right between the Andean A GRAMMAR OF and Amazonian linguistic areas. The grammar is of interest to specialists in South American languages and to typologists. AGUARUNA THE SERIES: MOUTON GRAMMAR LIBRARY The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages (IINIÁ CHICHAM) around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientifi c quality. MOUTON GRAMMAR LIBRARY www.degruyter.com ISBN 978-3-11-040557-6 ISSN 0933-7636 Simon E. Overall A Grammar of Aguaruna (Iiniá Chicham) Mouton Grammar Library Edited by Georg Bossong Bernard Comrie Matthew S. Dryer Patience L. Epps Volume 68 Simon E. Overall A Grammar of Aguaruna (Iiniá Chicham) ISBN 978-3-11-040557-6 ISSN 0933-7636 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com | Dedicated to the Aguaruna people, with love and respect. Acknowledgements This book is the product of many years of work – recording, analysing, and poring over data – then writing, editing, rethinking and rewriting. I couldn’t have complet- ed it alone. At every stage of the process many people helped me immensely, and I take this opportunity to acknowledge them. Most importantly, this grammar would not have been possible without the enthusiasm and support of the aents iiniá: the Aguaruna people. Isaías Dati Puanchig, Pablo Santiak Kajekui, Arias Chamik Ukuncham, Elías Mañan Wamputsag, Abiut Nanchijam Jempets, Eduardo Cungumas Kujancham, Segundo Cungumas Kujancham, Liseth Atamain Uwarai, and Jessica Danducho Yampis all worked closely with me at various stages of the project, and their contributions are gratefully acknowledged. In the community of Centro Wawik, I had the privilege of recording traditional stories and songs with the following people: Tito Nanchijam Pegas, Benjamín Chamik Kujikat, Pascual Majuash Jiukam, Tsatsupig Akintui Daichap, and Rubio Akintui Daichap. In Tundusa, the following people generously provided autobiographical stories: Ana Nanantai Shawit, Alfredo Quiac Chuin, Nuria Wampash Chamikag, and Salomé Peas Agkuash. I remain in awe of their deep knowledge of Aguaruna oral tradition, and I hope that this work does justice to their contributions. Successful fieldwork is not only about data and analysis. Consultants, their fam- ilies, and others in the communities became good friends during my time in Centro Wawik and Tundusa. Many people helped me in innumerable ways, and although it would be impossible to list them all, a few deserve particular mention. Apu Abel Namarai Nanchijam in Centro Wawik and Apu Rafael Akuts in Tundusa, as the chief elected officials, gave permission for me to stay and work in their communities and happily provided all the assistance I required. Their personal interest in and support of my work was vital. The indigenous organization ASODEINI (Asociación de Desar- rollo Integral Iiniá) provided excellent accommodation for my entire time in Centro Wawik along with generous help in all logistic matters. And I would especially like to acknowledge the generosity of the following people, in addition to those already mentioned: Doris Akintui, Prof Silvano Dati, Lucy Dekentai, and Pedro Nanchijam and family. Yatsug aidautigmin, ubag aidautigminash, tuja muun aidautigminashkam see tajime. On the academic side, this work benefitted immeasurably from the excellent ad- vice and encouragement of Sasha Aikhenvald and Bob Dixon, who supervised the dissertation on which it is based and also advised me during the revision process. Among the other people who were instrumental in my linguistics training, I take this opportunity to acknowledge two of my first linguistics teachers at the University of Auckland, the late W. Scott Allan and the late Frank Lichtenberk – inspiring men- tors who introduced me to the possibilities of a career in linguistics and did every- thing they could to encourage and support my pursuit of it. viii | Acknowledgements During the time that this grammar was a dissertation-in-progress at La Trobe University’s Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, colleagues and visitors were invaluable sources of information and inspiration, and my unofficial mentors Dave Fleck and Gerd Jendraschek always found the time for enlightening discussion. I hope that some of their insight and academic rigour is reflected in these pages. Angel Corbera Mori, whose work on Aguaruna laid the foundations for much of this grammar, generously shared published and unpublished material with me, which I gratefully acknowledge. The research was funded by an Australian Postgraduate Award and the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology. Of course, the grammar you are reading now has been greatly revised and up- dated from the dissertation version. The long revision process was guided by useful comments from the dissertation’s examiners Willem Adelaar, Bernard Comrie and John Hajek, and Mouton Grammar Library’s editor Pattie Epps read the full revised version and gave me many detailed and helpful comments. Adella Edwards pre- pared the maps with great patience and care. And finally, Jolene Overall unflinch- ingly proofread the entire manuscript with an incredible eye for detail. Most importantly, throughout all of this work, my family have tolerated my long fieldwork absences and late nights spent writing, and I thank them with all my heart. Simon E. Overall Cairns, November 2016 Table of contents Acknowledgements | vii Abbreviations and conventions | xix Maps | xxv 1 Introduction to the Aguaruna language | 1 1.1 Preliminaries | 1 1.2 Orthography and examples | 2 1.3 Word classes | 5 1.3.1 Verbs | 6 1.3.2 Nominals | 7 1.3.3 Pronouns | 7 1.3.4 Adverbial words | 8 1.3.5 Ideophones | 8 1.4 Morphology | 8 1.4.1 Affix and clitic | 9 1.4.2 Agglutination and fusion | 11 1.5 The noun phrase | 12 1.6 Clause structure | 13 1.7 Grammatical relations | 14 1.8 Finiteness | 14 1.8.1 Tense and aspect | 16 1.8.2 Person and number | 16 1.8.3 Mood and modality | 18 1.9 Subordinate and nominalized verbs | 18 1.10 Clause combining | 19 1.10.1 Switch-reference | 20 2 Cultural and historical context | 21 2.1 The Chicham languages | 21 2.2 History | 22 2.3 Traditional and modern culture | 25 2.4 Indigenous linguistic tradition | 27 2.5 Genetic relations | 30 2.6 The areal context | 31 2.7 Borrowing and codeswitching | 32 2.7.1 Spanish | 32 2.7.2 Quechuan | 34 2.7.3 Other languages | 35 2.8 Previous research | 35 x | Table of contents 2.8.1 Present and future work | 36 2.9 Fieldwork methodology and language data | 37 3 Phonology | 39 3.1 Introduction | 39 3.2 Consonants | 39 3.2.1 Oral stops | 40 3.2.2 Glottal stop | 42 3.2.3 Affricates and fricatives | 45 3.2.4 Glottal fricative /h/ | 48 3.2.5 Glides | 54 3.2.6 Nasal stops | 58 3.2.7 Rhotic | 59 3.2.8 Other consonantal allophony | 60 3.3 Vowels | 60 3.3.1 Vowel sequences | 62 3.3.2 Elision and devoicing of vowels | 63 3.4 Nasal and oral prosodies | 63 3.4.1 Nasality contrast, nasal domain and spreading | 64 3.4.2 Alternation of Ṽ with VN | 65 3.4.3 Denasalization | 67 3.5 Syllable structure and vowel elision | 71 3.5.1 Minimal word | 72 3.5.2 Vowel elision | 73 3.5.3 Diphthong reduction | 77 3.5.4 The syllable following vowel elision | 81 3.5.5 Syllable-position-conditioned consonantal effects | 83 3.5.6 Comparison with prior analyses | 86 3.6 Morphophonological processes | 88 3.6.1 Vowel sandhi and alternation of allomorphs | 88 3.6.2 Other processes | 103 3.7 Accent | 106 3.7.1 Accent in verbs | 111 3.7.2 Accent in nouns and adjectives | 116 3.7.3 Summary of accent | 121 3.8 Phonological word | 122 3.8.1 Reduplication | 122 3.8.2 Compound nouns | 124 3.8.3 Encliticization of relativizers | 125 3.8.4 Interjections | 125 3.9 Phonology of loans | 126 Table of contents | xi 4 Morphology of nouns, adjectives and pronouns | 127 4.1 Introduction | 127 4.2 Structure of the nominal word | 128 4.3 Noun and adjective | 130 4.3.1 Adjectival morphology | 133 4.3.2 Gradability | 135 4.3.3 Adjectivalizing derivation | 140 4.4 Subclasses of nouns | 142 4.4.1 Gender | 142 4.4.2 Proper names | 143 4.4.3 Kinship terms | 144 4.4.4 Locational nouns | 147 4.5 Compound nouns | 147 4.5.1 Semantic properties of compounds | 147 4.5.2 Syntactic properties of compounds | 149 4.5.3 Phonological properties