Morphosyntatic aspects of relativization in shipibo-konibo (pano)

The present article discusses crucial morpho-syntactic aspects of relative constructions in Shipibo-Konibo, a Panoan language spoken in the Peruvian Amazon. The analysis is predominantly based on data extracted from spontaneous texts. Shipibo-Konibo exhibits a number of features that are uncommon in...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Pilar Valenzuela Bismark
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi 2006-04-01
Series:Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1981-81222006000100009&lng=pt&nrm=iso&tlng=pt
Description
Summary:The present article discusses crucial morpho-syntactic aspects of relative constructions in Shipibo-Konibo, a Panoan language spoken in the Peruvian Amazon. The analysis is predominantly based on data extracted from spontaneous texts. Shipibo-Konibo exhibits a number of features that are uncommon in the languages of the world, such as the coexistence of prenominal, postnominal, and internally-headed relative clauses using the gap strategy. Also, the anaphoric pronoun strategy is attested in subject relativization, even when the relative clause precedes its head nominal. Although the same form can be employed to relativize different syntactic positions (A, S, O), in transitive internallyheaded relative clauses it is the object argument that must be interpreted as nucleus and hence as co-referential with an argument in the matrix clause. Given that internally-headed relatives also allow for intransitive subject relativization, they show an absolutive distribution. This constitutes the only instance of syntactic ergativity in an otherwise morphologically ergative but syntactically accusative language.
ISSN:1981-8122