Adverbial subordination at the peripheries of the Andean and Chaco linguistic areas

GOLLUSCIO, LUCÍA; HASLER, FELIPE; WILLEM DE REUSE

Minnesota

Encuentro; The Society for the Studies of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA)/Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting; 2014

SSILA / Linguistic Society of America

We approach areal linguistics from the periphery of two South American areas: the Andes and the Gran Chaco. We focus on adverbial subordination and compare languages which appear to be peripheral with respect to their own areas: Vilela (Lule-Vilela, genetic affiliation under discussion; Chacoan), Lule (Lule-Vilela, genetic affiliation under discussion; Andean) Mapudungun (isolate; Andean). Unlike Chacoan languages, Vilela has nonfinite forms for subordination and can use a suffix to express an instrumental meaning, like the Andean languages. Unlike Andean languages, Mapudungun and Lule do not have switch-reference and exhibit a serial verb root construction to express manner and/or purpose, as does Vilela. We propose that these four traits distinguish Vilela, Lule and Mapudungun from the typical Andean and Chacoan languages. We conclude that our results are a useful corrective of overly essentializing views (e.g.,lowland languages versus highland languages, or Amazonian languages versus Andean languages) in the complex interrelationships of linguistic areas in South America.