THE LANGUAGE OF THE APURINÃ PEOPLE OF BRAZIL (MAIPURE/ARAWAK) by SIDNEY DA SILVA FACUNDES June 1, 2000 A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of State University of New York at Buffalo in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics Dedication Popukaru˜wakorumonhi Popu˜karowakoropakunu, para os meus pais and hâi Kade. ii Acknowledgements First and foremost I wish to thank all of the Popu˜karuwakoru people who adopted and cared for me while I was in the field, and who taught me their language. Among them I thank most especially to the two Mipa Xir˜kayai , to Itaruru, Mainharu, Tokatxi, Kasãtomaro, Mokato, Koyoru, Matu, Kaneepa, Oyaka, Xirikoyaro, Powami, Bernaldinho, Artur, Pedrinho, Conceição, Chico Preto, Catuta, Antonio Apurinã, and so many others. Special thanks go also to Matthew Dryer for guiding me through the process of writing the dissertation, helping me to learn what I knew and what I still needed to know about Apurinã and about linguistics. My thanks also to the other readers of the dissertation, Karin Michelson and Wolfgang Wölck for all of their comments, suggestions and critiques, and to Sasha (Alexandra Aikhenvald) for making me come to terms with other Arawak languages. Most special thanks to my parents and to Kade for their love, care and trust. I thank all the professors of the linguistic departments of SUNY-Buffalo and of the University of Oregon who in different times taught me different ways of doing linguistics; among them I thank especially Colette Grinevald, who first taught me how to go about writing a grammatical description. Late thanks go to Sarah Lichtenstein, who for some years shared with me certain critical views that need to be taken into account no matter what. Thanks to Denny Moore, who supported my early work in important ways. Finally I thank the friends and colleagues who made graduate school easier and pleasant, and the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Inter-American Foundation, World Wildlife Fund, and Wenner- Gren Foundation for the financial support during part of my graduate studies. iii Tables of Contents Dedication............................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements................................................................................................. iii Table of Contents ....................................................................................................iv List of Tables..........................................................................................................xx List of Figures..................................................................................................... xxvi Abstract..............................................................................................................xxvii List of Abbreviations........................................................................................... xxix I. INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................1 1.0 Introduction.................................................................................................1 1.1 The Apurinã Society: Some Socio-Cultural Factors...................................2 1.1.1 Auto-Denomination ............................................................................3 1.1.2 Apurinã Villages: Geography, Demography and Other Information .4 1.1.3 Brief Comments on the Apurinã Cosmology and Material Culture .15 1.1.3.1 Marriage Practice....................................................................15 1.1.3.2 The Apurinã Creation Mythology and Other Stories..............18 1.1.3.3 The Present State of the Apurinã Culture ...............................19 1.1.1 Language Variation..........................................................................26 1.1.2 Language Contact ............................................................................27 iv 1.1.5.1 Reports on Contact with Other Languages .................29 1.1.5.2 Preliminary Linguistic Evidence of Contact with Other Languages...............................................................................32 1.1.5.3 Some Socio-Cultural Factors and Their Putative Roles in Inter-Ethnic Contacts..............................................................36 1.1.3 State of Endangerment of the Language...........................................40 1.2 Genetic Affiliation ....................................................................................42 1.3 Previous Literature....................................................................................47 1.4 Methodology and Theoretical Framework................................................49 1.5 The Apurinã Database...............................................................................51 1.6 Apurinã and Linguistic Typology.............................................................52 II. PHONOLOGY.................................................................................................54 2.0 Introduction...............................................................................................54 2.1 The Phonemic Inventory...........................................................................54 2.1.1 Vowels .............................................................................................55 2.1.1.1 Short Oral Vowels...................................................................56 2.1.1.1.1 [e] Lowering into []....................................................57 2.1.1.1.2 [o] ~ [u] ~ [] Free Variation.......................................60 2.1.1.1.3 Final Vowel Devoicing................................................60 2.1.1.1 Long Oral Vowels...................................................................62 2.1.1.2 Short Nasal Vowels.................................................................63 2.1.1.3 Long Nasal Vowels.................................................................67 v 2.1.2 Consonants.......................................................................................70 2.1.2.1 Voicing Alternation ................................................................73 2.1.2.2 “Backing” of /t/.......................................................................76 2.1.2.3 Palatalization...........................................................................77 2.1.2.4 Plosives Aspiration .................................................................78 2.1.3 Morphophonology..........................................................................79 2.1.3.1 // ~ /i/ Variation......................................................................79 2.1.3.2 Fronting of // into /i/ ..............................................................80 2.1.3.3 []-Deletion..............................................................................81 2.1.3.4 Nasal Palatalization.................................................................82 2.1.3.5 /h/-Deletion .............................................................................83 2.1.4 Brief Remarks on the Natural Classes of Vowels..........................83 2.2 Syllable Structure......................................................................................85 2.2.1 Diphthongs.......................................................................................85 2.2.2 Syllable Types and Structure ...........................................................87 2.3 Stress.........................................................................................................91 2.3.1 Preliminaries .....................................................................................91 2.3.2 Culminative Stress and Stress Levels ...............................................93 2.3.3 Shifts in the Position of the Culminative Stress................................99 2.3.3.1 Stress Shift Motivated by Weight...........................................99 2.3.3.2 Stress Assignment and the Adddition of Bound Forms........103 2.3.3.3 Brief Remarks on the Structure of Prosodic Words..............105 2.3.3.4 Problems Related to Stress....................................................107 vi 2.4 Minimal Word Requirement...................................................................112 2.5 Phonotactic Constraints ..........................................................................115 2.6 The Apurinã Orthographic System .........................................................117 III. INTRODUCTION TO MORPHOLOGY.....................................................121 3.0 Introduction.............................................................................................121 3.1 The Domain of Morphology ...................................................................121 3.2 The Definition of Word ..........................................................................122 3.2.1 Phonological Word .........................................................................122 3.2.2 Grammatical Word..........................................................................124 3.2.3 Phonological versus Grammatical Word: Where They Differ?......126 3.3 The Morphological Description of Words..............................................128 3.3.1 Morphemes, Morphs, Formatives, Allomorphs.............................128 3.4 Parts-of-Speech System ..........................................................................133 3.4.1 Open Classes...................................................................................134