CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Tapiete is a Southern Tupí-Guaraní language spoken by about 2800 people in the region of Western Gran Chaco, in Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay. Like other languages in this linguistic family, Tapiete does not show specifically determination forms. Speakers express different definiteness grades through other grammatical resources which the language offers as demonstratives, numerals, and an alienable/inalienable possession system. The aim of this presentation is to provide an initial study of definiteness in Tapiete from the analysis of semantic and discourse functions of the demonstratives.This language has an adnominal and pronominal demonstrative system which distinguish three spatial distance grades: ko, kowa 'near the speaker', hoka, woka, akwa, ha'e 'far from the listener' y äü, pü 'far from speaker and listener'. At the same time, optionally speakers can indicate plurality when the referent reported by a demonstrative could be ambiguous. Because of an in-course language shift process within Tapietes community speech, we can distinguish only two spatial distance grades in nowadays speakers' usage of the demonstratives, as the forms äü, pü 'far from speaker and listener' are rarely used spontaneously in discourse. Furthermore, speakers have incorporated the loanword este this from Spanish to their Tapiete speech which seems to be a variant form together with the forms ko, kowa 'near the speaker' already mentioned. From a discursive point of view, in Tapiete demonstratives are very productive to indicate topics, and to exalt, identify or recover referentiality within a text. Its use can point out sharing information, they can assume anaphoric functions, and support information organization within a text. Our presentation is based on representative textual data which include different types of discourse genres, collected from long term field work carried out in Argentina and Bolivia.

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