A Grammatical Description of Warao Imperatives: Formal Brevity and Morphological Complexity

65 Cadernos de Etnolingüística A grammatical description of Warao imperatives: Formal brevity and morphological complexity Allegra Robertsona and Konrad Rybkab aUniversity of California, Berkeley, bMusée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac Abstract Warao is a morphologically complex language isolate, spoken in Guyana and Venezuela. This paper focuses on the critically endangered Guyanese dialect. First-hand data are used to provide a descriptive analysis of Warao imperative constructions, identify their grammatical features and illocutionary forces, and clarify relevant distinctions concerning telicity. The Warao imperative mood is composed of canonical (2nd singular and 2nd plural) and non-canonical (1st person and 3rd person) imperatives, which are expressed by a set of person-specific verbal suffixes. Both canonical and non-canonical imperatives are negated by the same standard negator. These imperatives commonly express instructions, requests, invitations, warnings, prohibitions, and optatives. As compared to verb forms in other moods, Warao imperatives are syntactically and formally simple; however, the imperative suffixes attach to the morphologically complex Warao verb, thus adding complexity to the compositional meaning of the imperative. In addition to bearing numerous other affixes, the Warao imperatives are often marked as telic. The common marking of telicity in the imperative has led to the reassessment of previous analyses by Osborn (1959) and Romero-Figueroa (2003). The ways in which Warao imperatives adhere to and differ from cross-linguistic trends are also explored. This paper draws on Speech Act Theory, as well as Dixon’s Basic Linguistic Theory more broadly. Keywords: Warao, imperative, morphology, telicity, indigenous language documentation 1 Introduction Imperative constructions are a typologically interesting category of language for several reasons, including their tendency toward simplicity of form. What does and does not appear in imperatives, as compared to other constructions, offers insight into the interconnections between form and function in manipulative speech acts. This paper focuses on imperative constructions in Warao, an endangered, poorly described language isolate spoken in northwestern Guyana and northeastern Venezuela. In Warao, an agglutinative, morphologically complex language, imperatives follow certain cross-linguistic trends proposed by Aikhenvald (2010), but do not uphold others. Warao imperatives adhere to the trend of formal brevity, in as much as they are often prosodically short speech acts, relative to those in other constructions, but do not tend toward grammatical simplicity as do imperatives in many languages. Zanuttini (2008), Zhang (1990), and Mauck (2005) posit a cross-linguistic trend, wherein, “imperative verbal morphology tends to be meager or reduced” (Zanuttini 2008: 189). In Warao, however, verbal affixes, ancillary verbs, and numerous other verbal and syntactic features regularly add nuance to imperative forms, resulting in a broad range of semantic possibilities. This analysis is the first in-depth study of Warao imperatives. The aim of the paper is to provide a descriptive analysis of Warao imperative constructions, identify their grammatical features and illocutionary forces, and clarify relevant distinctions conveyed by stem alternation and the suffix -n. First- 66 A grammatical description of Warao imperatives hand data are used to describe the morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties of Warao imperatives. The Warao are traditionally a riverine people, living primarily in the Orinoco Delta in Venezuela and along a series of smaller rivers in the Barima–Waini region of Guyana. Historically, smaller Warao communities also existed in Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname (Romero-Figueroa and Rybka, n.d.). As a result of this current geographical distribution, there are two main Warao dialects: Venezuelan and Guyanese Warao. An estimated 33,000 people speak Warao today, of which 28,000 live in Venezuela (Eberhard et al., 2019). This analysis focuses on the more endangered Guyanese dialect. Fieldwork was conducted in the indigenous village of Waramuri, located on Guyana’s Moruca River. According to local accounts, between nine and twenty fluent Warao speakers remain in Waramuri today, of an approximate population of 900 people. All fluent speakers are in their fifties or older. As in other northwestern communities of Guyana, these speakers are bilingual in Warao and English, or more precisely, variants of English on the spectrum between Guyanese English and Guyanese Creole English. Guyanese English, the national language of Guyana, and Guyanese Creole English, the local lingua franca, have likely influenced modern Guyanese Warao syntactically and lexically (e.g. partially anglicized word order, as discussed in §3.2). While this analysis is based on first-hand data from the Guyanese Warao, it also considers previous and ongoing research on both dialects, conducted by Romero-Figueroa and Rybka (n.d.), Romero-Figueroa (2003), Osborn (1959), and Barral (1979). The following sections focus on the form and function of Warao imperatives. §2 describes and evaluates the methods of data collection. To provide background, §3.1 presents a typological overview of imperatives, and §3.2 discusses general grammatical features of Warao relevant to the analysis of imperatives. §4 presents the Warao imperative paradigm, including both canonical (§4.1) and non- canonical imperatives (§4.2), as well as their negative counterparts (§4.3). §5 and §6 survey the verbal features and syntactic properties exhibited by imperatives, respectively. §7 looks more broadly at the category of commands in Warao and describes semantic differences. §8 provides potential explanations for phenomena such as telicity preferences in positive and negative imperatives, and the special status of 2nd singular imperatives. §9 summarizes the findings. 2 Methodology This fieldwork was conducted in the indigenous village of Waramuri, located on Guyana’s Moruca River. The research was carried out over the course of six weeks in August and September 2018, as part of a Warao Documentation and Revitalization project directed by Dr. Konrad Rybka. Original data were collected from six native speakers of Warao, ranging in age from 58 to 85. The group was composed of two men and four women, all of whom are bilingual in Warao and English. These consultants were compensated for their time and contribution, receiving an equivalent wage to primary school teachers in Guyana. Data were collected during a series of audio-recorded sessions lasting one to two hours at a time. Two sessions were also filmed. Primary data can be accessed at The Language Archive at The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (Archive: Warao, Contributor: Allegra Robertson). This study sought to clarify the distinctions expressed by stem alternation and the suffix -n, as they are of structural and semantic importance to Warao imperatives. Based on preliminary data collection, three hypotheses were formed and tested: 1) Stem alternation encodes punctual–durative contrast, and -n is part of the punctual allomorph -an due to an aspect-specific phonological constraint. 2) Stem alternation encodes punctual–durative contrast, while -n marks semelfactivity. 3) Stem alternation or the suffix -n mark telicity, depending on a phonological constraint specific to lexical aspect. Three methods were used to collect data: a speaker-addressee task, an elicitation task, and a cultural scenario task. In the speaker-addressee task, the speaker instructed the addressee through each step of a culturally important subsistence practice, in this case, the traditional baking of manioc bread. While this task created a natural context for imperatives, it only produced 2nd singular imperatives and thus 67 Cadernos de Etnolingüística provided no insight on plural or non-canonical imperatives; the speaker directed all imperatives at the addressee (the baker) without variation. Examples from this task, such as (14), (15), and (16) are included throughout the text. In the elicitation task, the consultant translated a series of imperatives, used in a wide range of contexts, from English to Warao, in all person categories. This exercise accumulated enough data to reveal an important trend: many English imperatives yield two, or even three, Warao forms per person category. These data revealed that Warao imperatives encode lexical aspectual distinctions that English imperatives do not encode, leading to the three hypotheses mentioned above. This task, however, fell short of verifying any hypothesis, due to the difficulty of translating aspectual distinctions to a non- aspect-encoding language like English. Examples from this task, including (19) and (20), can also be found throughout the text. In the cultural scenario task, the consultant was provided with a more specific, culturally relevant context (e.g. baking, paddling, farming, child rearing), a timeframe cue to discern lexical aspect (e.g. for a while, for a moment, one time), and an imperative alternation. The consultant then approved or rejected each provided scenario. This task, evidenced in examples such as (17) and (18), was successful in clarifying translations and confirming the third hypothesis, as described in §4. 3 Background 3.1 Typological overview of imperatives A helpful framework for understanding the intentions and effects of imperative constructions is provided by Speech Act Theory, and particularly the

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