Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas ISSN: 1981-8122
[email protected] Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi Brasil da Cruz, Aline The rise of number agreement in Nheengatu Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas, vol. 10, núm. 2, mayo- agosto, 2015, pp. 419-439 Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi Belém, Brasil Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=394051442011 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative Bol. Mus. Para. Emílio Goeldi. Cienc. Hum., Belém, v. 10, n. 2, p. 419-439, maio-ago. 2015 The rise of number agreement in Nheengatu A emergência da concordância de número em Nheengatu Aline da Cruz Universidade Federal de Goiás. Goiania, Goiás, Brasil Abstract: Number agreement systems often present traces of older elements common to different languages of the same family; thus, their emergence is difficult to reconstruct. One possible origin of such systems is the grammaticalization of plural words into bound morphemes, which, as a result of a long process, develop into agreement markers and may become obligatory. Various investigations have provided evidence for this hypothesis. However, the complete process of change from a system with no number as grammatical category into a number agreement system in a single language has not been documented. This paper analyses documents covering different stages of the development of the Nheengatu language from Tupinambá in order to observe how the number agreement system emerged in modern Nheengatu.