A DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR OF DESANO by Wilson de Lima Silva A dissertation submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fullfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics University of Utah August 2012 Copyright © Wilson de Lima Silva 2012 All Rights Reserved The University of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF DISSERTATION APPROVAL The dissertation of Wilson de Lima Silva has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: Lyle Campbell Chair 5/29/2012 Date Approved Mary Ann Christison Member 6/14/2012 Date Approved Edward Rubin Member 5/8/2012 Date Approved Spike Gildea Member 5/24/2012 Date Approved Kristine Stenzel Member 5/7/2012 Date Approved and by Edward Rubin Chair of the Department of ________________________ Linguistics and by Charles A. Wight, Dean of The Graduate School. ABSTRACT This dissertation provides a linguistic description and analysis of Desano, an endangered Tukanoan language of the Vaupes region of Brazil. Much valuable knowledge would be lost if this language were to become extinct without documentation. Several of the Tukanoan languages in the upper Amazon are highly endangered. The Eastern Tukanoan people are famous for their linguistic exogamy and ‘obligatory’ multilingualism; there are some twenty languages in the region whose speakers must marry someone who speaks a different language. There are a number of linguistic traits in Desano described in this dissertation which are of particular interest to linguists in general, because they are rare in the world’s languages, and they stand to contribute much to our understanding of the full range of possibilities in human grammar (and consequently also of some of the limits of human cognition). These include: nasal harmony (in phonology), the noun classifier system (in morphology), and the evidential system (in the interface of morphology-syntax- semantics). The dissertation begins with an introduction of the Desano people and their language; including sociolinguistic information and some historical background. The second chapter presents a phonological description. It then proceeds with a description of the parts of speech in Desano and the characterization of the ‘word’ in Desano, in Chapter 3. The bulk of the dissertation is devoted to the morphosyntax of Desano, with chapters devoted to nominal morphology and verbal morphology. This dissertation provides a reasonably comprehensive description and documentation of Desano, one of the most endangered Tukanoan languages. The descriptions of unusual typological traits (i.e., nasal harmony, evidentiality, verb serialization, etc.) contribute to the general linguistic scholarship in significant ways, since accurate accounts of the traits mentioned are of considerable interest for linguistic typology and theory generally. iv To my parents Wilson and Socorro with love. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT.........................................................................................................................iii LIST OF FIGURES............................................................................................................. viii LIST OF TABLES................................................................................................................ix ABBREVIATION LIST......................................................................................................xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...................................................................................................xiv Chapters 1 THE DESANO PEOPLE AND THEIR LANGUAGE........................................1 1. 1 Goals of the Dissertation...................................................................................1 1.2 A Brief History of the Research....................................................................... 2 1.3 Methodology and Corpus..................................................................................4 1.4 Typological Profile of Desano..........................................................................5 1.5 A Brief History of Contact................................................................................7 1.6 The Vaupes Region of Northwest Amazonia................................................. 9 1.7 The Languages of the Vaupes and the Language Contact Situation............ 12 1.8 The Tukanoan Languages.................................................................................14 1.9 The Desano People........................................................................................... 15 1.10 The Desano Language: Sociolinguistic Situation.........................................18 1.11 Previous Work on Desano..............................................................................20 1.12 Language Maintenance and Educational Projects........................................27 2 PHONETIC S AND PHONOLOGY...................................................................... 30 2.1 Introduction........................................................................................................ 30 2.2 Segmental Phonology....................................................................................... 31 2.3 Suprasegmental Phonology...............................................................................57 2.4 Morphophonemic Processes.............................................................................79 2.5 Notes on Orthography....................................................................................... 83 2.6 Summary............................................................................................................ 84 3 PARTS-OF-SPEECH..............................................................................................85 3.1 Introduction........................................................................................................ 85 3.2 The ‘Word’ in Desano...................................................................................... 86 3.3 Parts of Words: Roots and Formatives............................................................88 3.4 Parts-of-Speech: An Overview.........................................................................89 3.5 Summary............................................................................................................ 103 4 NOMINAL MORPHOLOGY................................................................................104 4.1 Introduction........................................................................................................ 104 4.2 Structure of Noun Roots...................................................................................104 4.3 Types of Nouns..................................................................................................105 4. 4 Pronouns and other Pro-Forms....................................................................... 139 4.5 Other Nominal Morphemes..............................................................................154 4.6 Noun Phrase Structure...................................................................................... 175 4.7 Summary............................................................................................................ 201 5 VERBAL MORPHOLOGY...................................................................................203 5.1 Introduction........................................................................................................ 203 5.2 Structure of Verb Roots....................................................................................203 5.3 Verb Classes....................................................................................................... 206 5.4 Serial Verb Construction...................................................................................234 5.5 The Verb Morphology...................................................................................... 244 5.6 Summary............................................................................................................ 269 CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................271 Appendices A: SURVEY OF LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN THE DESANO COMMUNITIES....... 273 B: TEXT 1 - THE HUNTER AND THE MONKEY........................................................279 C: TEXT 2 - COLLECTING MATERIALS TO MAKE ORNAMENTS......................286 REFERENCES..................................................................................................................... 290 vii LIST OF FIGURES 1.1 The Vaupes Region in the Brazil-Colombia border............................................. 11 2.1 Formant plots of the six vowels of Desano...........................................................34 2.2 Spectrograms for the words [ahsifi] ‘hot’ and [wehko] ‘parrot’........................... 48 2.3 Spectrograms for the words [gobe] ‘hole’ and [yeba] ‘ground’.......................... 49 2.4 Spectrograms of [kore] ‘before’ and [ko?re] ‘to wait’..........................................53 2.5 Spectrograms for (C)V1V2 sequences.................................................................... 59 2.6. Spectrograms for (C)V1V1 sequences......................................................................60 2.7 Prominent pitch movement..................................................................................... 66 2.8 Vowel length in Desano words...............................................................................68