Converbs in Vilela

GOLLUSCIO LUCIA

Pittsburgh

Encuentro; The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas Annual Meeting; 2011

Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA)

Vilela (Lule-Vilela family) is a highly endangered language in Chaco, Argentina. This paper describes the Vilela converb in -(e)l, places this construction in the typology of converbs and compares the converbs with the serial verb root constructions. Both constructions express different values on a formal and semantic event integration continuum. The serialized verbal roots, which are always monoclausal, exhibit advanced lexicalization and grammaticalization processes. In contrast, showing different degrees of syntactic complexity, the converbs function as the nuclei of both event-oriented and participant-oriented clauses. The combination of clauses with converbal constructions offers a productive alternative to organize the rhetorical structure of narratives. The corpus considers three landmarks in Vilela language documentation: the mythical-historical narrative recorded in Chaco in the late 1800s (Llamas 1910), other texts recorded in the 1970s (Lozano 1970, 1977, 2006) and our own field data. Advancements in the description of Vilela also add knowledge to the genealogical and contact relationships in Chaco and South America.