Caribbean Northern Arawak person marking and alignment: a comparative and diachronic analysis

This dissertation examines morphosyntactic variation and change in the modern Caribbean/nNorthern Arawak (CNA) languages in the domains of argument-marking and alignment./nCNA is the northernmost group of the Arawak language family, whose members are spoken/nprimarily in South America. The modern CNA languages include Garifuna, Lokono, A~nun,/nand Wayuu, spoken on the Caribbean coasts of Central and South America. Members of the/nsubgroup that are currently not spoken include Shebayo, Island Carib, and Taino./nChapter 1 of this work introduces the CNA languages and provides background information/nabout current language vitality and documentation status for each CNA language. In this/nchapter, I also discuss internal subgrouping for the branch, incorporating the results of a/nlexical phylogenetic study I carried out for the CNA languages. I then compare the results to/nearlier classications of the language family and show that my novel subgrouping proposal is/nwell supported. Subsequently, I examine comparative morphological evidence for subgrouping/nand nd it to be compatible with the structure I propose. The chapter concludes with a/ndescription of argument marking and active-stative alignment in the CNA languages./nChapter 2 examines a process of alignment change attested in the CNA languages that has/nbeen facilitated by the reanalysis of a suxal subject nominalizer employed in relative clauses/nas agreement morphology encoding a syntactic subject. Properties of the modern subject/nconstruction are related to properties of nominalizations cross-linguistically. Nominalized/nverbs in predicate position in non-verbal predicate constructions are proposed as a bridging/nconstruction in this reanalysis, and a suxal paradigm involved in encoding objects and/nstative subjects is shown to have provided an analogical template for the reanalysis of the/nnominalizer as agreement morphology for at least Garifuna. Finally, I demonstrate that/nthe sole CNA language that does not exhibit the suxal subject agreement construction,/nLokono, exhibits properties that rule out the diachronic pathway I propose for the other/nCNA languages | only those CNA languages that lack a copula and exhibit verb initiality/ndeveloped the suxal person marking morphology examined here./nChapter 3 investigates a shift in lexical category from adposition to auxiliary in two Northern/nCaribbean Arawak languages, Wayuu and Garifuna. While the emergent auxiliaries bear/nstriking similarities in terms of distribution and argument marking | both occur post-verbally/nand carry prexal and suxal verbal agreement morphology | I argue that the innovation is/nnot joint, but independent. I draw on comparative evidence from the adpositional systems/nof the other modern CNA languages to support my proposal. While Garifuna and Wayuu/nshare a similar typological prole, comparative morphological evidence, along with extant/nknowledge of relatedness for the family, generally, suggests they do not form a subgroup/nindependent of the other Caribbean Northern Arawak languages, providing support for an/nanalysis where each language independently innovated its auxiliary system. As in the case of/nthe development of suxal person morphology, properties of proto-CNA appear to have made/nsuch a development available. The change from adposition to auxiliary is typologically rare,/nand has not been previously described or analyzed in the literature on grammaticalization. I/nargue here that insubordination and analogy are the formal mechanisms that allowed for this/nchange in the CNA languages./nChapter 4 concludes and discusses avenues for future comparative morphosyntactic research/ninvolving the CNA languages.

Advisor: Michael, Lev D
Mikkelsen, Line HL