# Review of "A Grammar of Kakataibo" by Roberto Zariquiey

Adam J. R. Tallman

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## To cite this version:

Adam J. R. Tallman. Review of "A Grammar of Kakataibo" by Roberto Zariquiey. International Journal of American Linguistics, 2020, 86 (4), pp.578. hal-04919382

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Review of *A Grammar of Kakataibo* for *International Journal of American Linguistics*

Reviewed work: Zariquiey, Roberto Biondi. 2018. *A Grammar of Kakataibo*. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Zariquiey's (2018) *A Grammar of Kakataibo* will be of great interest to Amazonianists and Typologists alike. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the history of the *Kakataibo* speech community and the ethnographic context of the description of the language. Currently Kakataibo is spoken on the border between the Huanaco and Ucayali regions of Peru by approximately 3000 people. This chapter provides an impressive description of dialect variation in Kakataibo based on original fieldwork. The author's phonological correspondences provide evidence for two dialectal subgroups. The rest of the grammar focuses on the Aguaytía dialect of Kakataibo (see Valle 2017 for the San Alejandro dialect).

A careful discussion of the phoneme inventory coupled with instrumental evidence on phonetic realization that includes palatographic images (for place of articulation), spectrographic displays, some descriptive statistics on correlates and even the results of some perceptual tests. Sensitive to the knowledge that there is significant cross-linguistic variation in the realization of glottal stops, Zariquiey provides phonetic evidence that shows that the glottal stop is consistently realized as a complete closure with an abrupt release across different morphosyntactic contexts. Throughout the chapter insightful discussions of Pano phonology are provided throughout. Extensive spectrographic displays that stress is realized with a high pitch on a rightmost (trochaic) foot of the prosodic word and that much bound morphology is lexically marked with high tones. Zariquiey shows that the parsing of phonological words over morphosyntactic structure is sensitive to syllable count. For instance, clitics are integrated into the phonological word of their host (root or stem) unless they are more than two syllables in which case, they form their own prosodic word. Interestingly, Zariquiey's discussion of morphological complex verb forms (five or more syllables) suggests that Kakataibo speakers vary according to whether they parse highly complex finite verb forms into one or two prosodic words (or alternatively whether high pitch culminativity is necessarily a property of prosodic words or not).

Chapter 4 provides an overview of morphological categories such as the root, stem, word, affix, and clitic. Like other Pano languages, Kakataibo is highly suffixing, with a single prefix position dedicated to body-parts. The grammar provides a rich description of Kakataibo's 31 body-part prefixes which includes their "corresponding roots" (roots that express concepts in the same semantic range of the prefixes) and their semantic extension into plant and animal parts and their "spatial relations that are synchronically expressed by postpositions" (p. 167). While Zariquiey argues the distinction between inflection and derivation is generally motivated, Kakataibo is interesting in that many morphemes flaunt a clean divide between these categories. For instance, some adverbial enclitics which Zariquiey posits are typically positioned with respect to phrases, can surface in positions that are otherwise reserved for derivational suffixes (a phenomenon that other linguists might characterize as endocliticization). Chapter 4 also provides an overview of the number of bound morphemes that occurs per word in natural discourse, providing a much more precise description of synthesis than has been given for any Pano language thus far.

Chapter 5 provides a thorough description of word classes and subclasses. Postpositions are described with a high degree of semantic detail using the BowPed
picture series (Bowerman & Pederson 1992) and the description of categories typically
not discussed in descriptive grammars such as interjections and onomatopoeic words
attest to the thoroughness of the grammar.

In Chapters 6 and 7 nouns and verbs are described. Zariquiey shows that nouns fall
into different classes according to their ability to pluralize and how they are understood
in switch reference constructions. Adjectives fall into distinct classes according to their
ordering in relation to their head noun and the type of allomorphy they display.

Chapter 8 is concerned with verb classes. As is typical of Pano languages, verbs fall into classes according to transitivity, but Zariquiey also provides subclassifications based on morphophonological properties of verb roots that likely derive from compounding processes that are no longer productive (p. 295), and discusses the morphosyntax and semantics of properties of a few exceptional verbs (such "lack" and "think").

Chapter 9 is the lengthiest chapter in the grammar as it deals with verbal suffixes
of which Kakataibo has a highly elaborated set. Kakataibo has 30 (depending on how
they are counted) verbal derivational suffixes, most of which are productive, that encode
valence changes, quantification, aspect, direction, associated motion, and deonticity.
According to Zariquiey derivational suffixes variably order (some examples are provided
Chapter 4) with the exception of aspectual, directional, and associated motion suffixes for
which a three-slot template is provided accounting for mutual exclusivity of some of the
suffixes (p. 309-310). Following the derivational suffixes, six slots are dedicated to
inflectional suffixes, which encode time of day, aspect, time of day, graded tense subject
person and number. Some typologically rarer categories expressed by the inflectional
system are "addressee's perspective", "accusatory speech act" and "complaining"
negation. All inflectional slots are obligatorily filled except the first. Finally, the chapter
discusses verbal reduplication, periphrastic verb constructions and irregular verb forms.

Chapter 10 is dedicated to (free) adverbs and participant agreement. Like other Pano
languages, Kakataibo has a set of inflectional markers which associate an adjunct or
adverb to a specific core participant {A, S, P}. Zariquiey shows that space adverbs,
locative adjuncts and even some numerals and quantifiers are obligatorily marked for
participant agreement.

Chapter 11 describes the syntax of independent clauses. One aspect of Kakataibo
that distinguishes it from many other Pano languages is that it contains a rich set of second
position clitics that encode a variety of typologically interesting categories. Among the
second position enclitics are morphemes that are dedicated to marking register or aspects
of conversational interaction.

Chapter 12 describes switch reference constructions introduced with a careful and
typologically informed discussion of the author's terminological choices. A notable
property of Pano languages is that their switch reference systems can encode object
(dis)joint reference across the marked and control clause. Kakataibo has the most complex
switch reference system, thus far documented in any Pano language, with 21 markers.
Kakataibo shows sloppy coreference (Matić 2016) in its switch-reference system such
that certain participants in a part-whole relation are coded as if they were the same.
Zariquiey also describes paratactic constructions built from of switch reference clauses
which express frustrative, completive, and inchoative among other aspectual and modal
notions. Chapter 13 describes reported speech and 'elaborative clauses', which refer to
weakly embedded dependent clauses which occur after the main verb.
Chapter 14 discusses grammatical nominalizations which refers to derviational morphemes which build referential categories from whole clauses. Like many Amazonian languages, grammatical nominalizations are used for relativization and complementation, functional domains, which are also described in detail.

Chapter 15 discusses grammatical relations across Kakataibo grammar. A typologically notable part of Kakataibo grammar is that it displays a tripartite case marking system, where S, A and P all display different case markers. Zariquiey also provides a detailed review of behavioral properties, showing that the language also displays neutral, accusative, ergative, horizontal, and alignments across different grammatical domains of the language.

Chapter 16 is largely concerned with the way that information structure and conversational interaction relate to Kakataibo grammar. Based on elicited examples one could claim that Kakataibo displays a basic AOV/SV order, but discourse factors are largely responsible for the position of constituents in the clause, and most clauses (57.7%) have no overtly expressed core arguments. Zariquiey argues that the first position in the clause denotes old/topical information and a postverbal position is for new/focused information. Interestingly, Valle (2017) has described nearly the opposite situation for the San Alejandro dialect of Kakataibo. Unfortunately, Zariquey's discussion does not clarify whether or the extent to which these diverging descriptions reflect variation between Aguaytía and San Alejandro dialects or terminological differences he might have with Valle. After the behavior of case marking, definiteness and tail-head linkage in naturalistic speech is described, a data-rich description of conversational interaction is provided which clarifies what the author means by register marking and (non)proximal addressee marking, introduced earlier in the grammar.

*A Grammar of Kakataibo* is not just notable for its attention to detail, the well-organized presentation, and in-depth discussion of topics not normally addressed in descriptive grammars, but it is also cutting-edge methodologically as the empirical facts are revealed through an approach which integrates data from naturalistic speech, careful elicitation, and controlled experiments. Zariquiey has, thus, provided an immensely important descriptive work on the Kakataibo language together with a serious methodological contribution to the field of linguistics generally.

## Bibliography

Bowerman, Melissa, and Eric Pederson. 1992. "Topological relations picture series." In *Space stimuli kit 1.2*, edited by Stephen C. Levinson. Nijmegan: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

Matić, Dejan. 2016. "Even converbs and the syntax of switch-reference." In *Switch Reference 2.0*, edited by Rik van Gijn and Jeremy Hammond, 335-377. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.

Valle, Daniel. 2017. *Grammar and Information Structure of Kakataibo*. PhD dissertation: University of Texas at Austin.

Zariquiey, Roberto. 2018. *A Grammar of Kakataibo*. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Adam J.R. Tallman