1 MORPHOSYNTAX OF THE NIVACLE VERB AND SOME COMPARISONS WITH THE OTHER LANGUAGES OF THE GRAN CHACO REGION AND BEYOND1 Alain Fabre (Final version: 17/10/2017)
[email protected] Abstract The following paper explores the morphosyntax of Nivacle verbs. Like most Gran Chaco languages, Nivacle is understudied. Additionally, it exhibits interesting typological rarities. Particular typological topics are also addressed, offering comparisons with other languages both within the Gran Chaco area and on a wider geographical scale, but no attempt has been made to offer a systematic typological comparison of each particular problem. However, the paper does not address purely lexical derivation, which I have considered elsewhere (Fabre 2016: 327–343)2 nor such topics as coordination, subordination, multi-verb constructions and relative clauses. Of course, verbs play a central role in those constructions and they will be spotted in many examples. For more information, the interested reader is referred to Fabre (2016: 388–433). Vowels :(a) modal /i, e, a, ɒ, o, u/ (b) glottalized /i,̉ ẻ, ả, ɒ̉, ỏ, ủ/ Consonants /p, t, k, pʔ, tʔ, kʔ, ʔ, f, s, ʃ, x, ʦ, ʧ, ʦʔ, ʧʔ, ɬ, kl͡, m, n, j, v/ 1 I am very grateful to Rodrigo Montani for detailed comments and suggestions concerning not only Wichí, his own field of expertise, but also many other technical aspects of this paper. I also wish to thank Hannes Kalisch for sharing with me in numerous occasions his first-hand knowledge of Enlhet- Enenlhet languages and putting me on the right track wherever I misinterpreted the data.