On the Nivacle determiners na, xa, ka, and pa

GUTIÉRREZ, ANALÍA

Vancouver

Conferencia; Northwest Linguistics Conference; 2010

Simon Fraser University

Nivaclé (Matacoan-Mataguayan) determiner system consists of four morphemes. According to Stell´s (1989:363) classification, na, xa and ka introduce entities and individuals that are known by the speaker, but that are (1) spatially present (at the utterance time), (2) spatially absent (from the utterance time), and (3) no longer existent (deceased, broken, disappeared), respectively. In turn, pa is used with entities and individuals that are unknown by the speaker or known by reference (4). The goal of this paper is to address the semantic and pragmatic distinctions that are encoded in the Nivaclé determiner system. I discuss the distinctions proposed in the semantic literature of determiners such as definiteness, familiarity (Heim 1982) specificity (Ludlow and Neale 1991), and assertion of existence (Matthewson 1998) and examine how they can help delineate a characterization of the Nivaclé determiners. Based on my own fieldwork data, I propose: (i) Nivaclé determiners do not encode definiteness, and thus no determiner choice is induced by a novel/familiar context; (ii) Nivaclé determiners do not seem to encode specificity; (iii) Nivaclé determiners seem to encode assertion of existence. For example, whereas na presupposes assertion of existence, pa presupposes non-assertion of existence. The felicitous use of pa involves non-factual operators in the form of questions/future/negation (6). Furthermore, I propose that (iv) the notion of speaker´s knowledge/lack of knowledge should be replaced with (visual) first-hand knowledge/second-hand knowledge, where assertion of existence arises as a secondary effect. I thus argue that the primary distinction that the Nivaclé determiners mark is one of evidentiality: all of them indicate how the speaker knows about the entitity. In addition, deictic information is used to distinguish na from xa (spatially present vs. spatially absent/distal, respectively). I conclude that both evidentiality and dectic information is encoded in the Nivaclé determiner system.