Copyright by Wikaliler Daniel Smith 2014 The Dissertation Committee for Wikaliler Daniel Smith certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: A Grammar of Guna: A Community-Centered Approach Committee: _____________________________ Nora England, Supervisor _____________________________ Patience Epps _____________________________ Daniel Law ______________________________ Joel Sherzer ______________________________ Anthony Woodbury A GRAMMAR OF GUNA: A COMMUNITY- CENTERED APPROACH by Wikaliler Daniel Smith, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2014 For the Dule, Because I am one of your sons, and For Ava, May one day you embrace all that you are Acknowledgements A project with so many layers would not have been possible without the support, friendship, love and prayer from a diverse collection of people at every stage. These include members of the Guna community, professors, colleagues, friends and family. First of all, I would like to express my immense gratitude to the many speakers of Guna and community members who opened their homes, shared with me their time, and allowed me to record their voices. Thank you to Igwawikdiginya Gómez, Angerí Gonzalez, Leny Smith, Ricardo Chiari, Hortenciano Martínez, Beatriz Smith, Ediltrudis López, Isolina Fernández, Meraldo Robles, Nilda García, Gabino Torres, Chief Leodomiro Paredes, Chief Dicky Brown, Francisco Quijano, Aloyd Boyd, Rosamelia Tejada, Pedro Green, Nivia Alba Filós, Belinda Calvo, Nereida Barrantes, Mercedes Barrantes, Kempes Archibold, Gilberto Casís, Ricardo Arias, Elías Pérez, Olopankipiler Pérez, Benito Morales, Faustino Alba, Diana Lopez and Alcides Esquivel. There are three people who deserve special mention: Yageri Pérez, Pailiber Rodriguez and my father, Lino Smith. They were instrumental in the completion of the dissertation, assisting me with transcription, translation, and in withstanding countless questions that I had about the language. I am also grateful to the many people at the Congreso General Guna and the Congreso General de la Cultura Guna who opened doors for me to share and interact v with the community at large. A personal thank you goes to Migdalia Herrera, Simion Brown, Anelio Merry, and Breido López, who were my main contacts at both congresos. At the University of Texas at Austin I am indebted to a wonderful faculty, especially those that agreed to serve as mentors and advisors for this project. They offered continuous support, encouragement, and counsel since the day I arrived. Each one of them contributed to my research in ways I cannot do justice here, but I will try. Many thanks to Tony Woodbury for allowing me to learn from him through his incredible insights into linguistic theory and inquiry, Danny Law (once a compañero as well) for contributing with important and helpful comments as the project neared its end, Pattie Epps for sharing with me her wealth of knowledge and for always offering words of support. Joel Sherzer was the main reason I came to Texas, and he was always encouraging all the way to the end. To him, thank you. Finally, I want to express my deepest appreciation to Nora England, who was my principal advisor. Without her unwavering support, none of this would have been possible. Her contributions to this project, academically and personally, are immeasurable and certainly felt. During my time as a graduate student, I made several friends and met knowledgeable compañeros who have encouraged me, offered me inspiration, and shared with me their knowledge. Thank you to Juan Jesus Vazquez, Felix Julca, Ajb’ee Jiménez, Gabriela García, B’alam Mateo Toledo, María García, I-Wen Lai, Hilaria Cruz, Stephanie Villard, Cynthia Hansen, Emiliana Cruz, Lev Michael, Simeon Floyd, Eric Campbell, Ryan Sullivant, Telma Can, Ana Paola Brandao, Daniel Valle, Jaime Pérez, vi among many others. A group of people deserve special attention because their fingerprints are all over this grammar: Kayla Price, Lindsey Newbold, Natalia Bermudez and Tony Wright. Thank you all for sharing books, documents and articles, as well as your incredible and helpful insights, commenting, and participating in this process. I need to mention and express my appreciation to the individuals and institutions that made it possible for me to come to the University of Texas and remain for as long as I did through financial support. Thank you to the US State Department for sponsoring me the first two years through the Fulbright program, Heidi Johnson and now Susan Smythe Kung who have allowed me to work and learn about archiving at the Archive of Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA), the Department of Linguistics (especially Nora England, Richard Meier, Pattie Epps, Joel Sherzer, Tony Woodbury, Leslie Crooks and Ben Rapstein), the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin for a Graduate Research Fellowship. This research was possible through funding from the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP grant IGS0085) of SOAS and the Documenting Endangered Languages of NSF. Thank you. Without my family outside of Panama, this wouldn’t have been possible: Aunt Lorie and Uncle Bill have been my second set of parents, always supportive and always loving. Also, I want to thank all the families that have offered unrelenting support during this time: the Prices, the Grahams, the Heydenburks (Joel and Courtney), the Vernons, and the Rekedals. Special thanks to Keith and Wilma Forster for being more than my Kuna-linguistics mentors throughout this whole process; you are my family. vii Finally, my family is my source of inspiration, strength and love. My parents, Lino and Amilda Smith, and my sister, Elizabeth encouraged me to come to graduate school and have always offered words of support. To my wife I owe everything during the difficult but rewarding process of finalizing the project. Without her steadfast support, patience, help, encouragement, and more importantly, love, this dissertation would not be where it is today. I am a better man because of you. Wikaliler Daniel Smith Austin, July 2014 viii A GRAMMAR OF GUNA: A COMMUNITY- CENTERED APPROACH Wikaliler Daniel Smith, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2014 Supervisor: Nora England This dissertation is a descriptive grammar of Guna, a Chibchan language of Panama with an approximate 40,000 speakers. The aim of the dissertation is to provide a description of the language that is linguistically relevant and at the same time straightforward and readable for a wider audience that may include the community of Guna speakers. This work fills a gap that exists in the literature for Guna. Great work has been done about Guna in diverse areas and disciplines. However, as the Guna population seeks to become more involved in their own representation (Howe 2010), there exists a great need for a document that bridges the understanding of Guna linguistics with the community’s efforts of language maintenance and revitalization. In order to accomplish this, chapters are written in such a way that topics can be easily located, linguistic ix concepts are fully explained, and the language used to describe specific linguistic phenomena is straightforward. The dissertation is organized as follows: Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the academic and cultural context in which the dissertation was written and the methodology used in data collection and writing; Chapter 2 describes the phonology of the language and explains different orthographies that have surfaced for Guna; Chapter 3 presents the roots/bases and the formatives that attach to them; Chapter 4 builds on the previous chapter to describe phrases that have nouns and modifiers as heads; Chapter 5 discusses verbal morphology; Chapter 6 gives a description of sentence formation, which includes different syntactic phenomena such as type of predicates, word order, and pragmatically determined word orders; Chapter 7 serves as a bridge between Chapters 6 and 8 as it describes serial verb constructions, structures with two verbs that function as one predicate; and Chapter 8 is an account of clause combinations in the language. Although Guna is still spoken and learned by children, its dwindling percentage of native speakers makes it an endangered language. Therefore, this grammar is a contribution to the field of linguistics and to the efforts of revitalization and maintenance within the community. x Table of Contents Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………… v List of Tables ………………………………………………………………… xviii List of Maps …………………………………………………………………… xix List of Figures …………………………………………………………………. xx List of Abbreviations…………………………………………………………… xxi Chapter 1. Introduction ……………………………………………………….. 1 1.1 Objectives of the grammar ................................................................................ 2 1.2 The language and its speakers .......................................................................... 5 1.3 Previous work on Guna .................................................................................. 12 1.4 Guna as Chibchan .......................................................................................... 16 1.5 Methodology .................................................................................................. 20 Chapter 2. The Sounds of Guna ……………………………………………... 25 2.1 Main Concepts ..............................................................................................