INVESTIGADORES
NERCESIAN veronica
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Word-Formation in Polysynthetic Languages: Noun Incorporation in Wichi (Mataguayan)
Autor/es:
NERCESIAN, VERÓNICA
Reunión:
Conferencia; Universals and Typology in Word-Formation II Conference; 2012
Resumen:
This paper builds on my research on Wichi (Nercesian 2011a), undertaken
in the province of Formosa and Chaco, Argentina, as well as on previous studies
on the morphology-phonology interaction (Nercesian 2011b). Wichi is a
Mataguayan language spoken by approximately 40,000 people in Gran Chaco, South
America. This study analyzes a type of noun incorporation as a word-formation
process entailing the interaction between morphology and phonology, and
morphology-syntax.
On the one hand, incorporation is associated with a
special prosodic structure that is very predictable and systematically applied
to the new verb. It consists of two unbounded feet, which are formed from the
binding of the two elements (V+N), and a stress-stem type rule. The primary
stress is applied to the first syllable of the incorporated noun root and the
secondary stress on the verbal root, see (1)-(2).
(1) ( x)(x )
/i.wù.pó.se.ta/
iwu+poset-a
3SUB:do+beak/lip-IC
He/she whistles.
(2) ( x)(x )
/i.wù.ʔé.ɬa.hi/
iwu+elh-a=hi
3SUB:do+other-IC=LOC
He/she
changes.
This prosodic structure results exclusively from noun
incorporation as a word-formation process. Note that the complex word resulting
from noun incorporation can be, in turn, derived by a locative or directional
clitic (i.e. (2)), as occurs with simple verbal bases. The incorporated noun
can be alienable or inalienable, basic or derived. Only two verbs can be used
to incorporate nouns, iwuye to do
and yenlhi to make.
Other types of Wichi noun incorporation do not consist
of a word-formation process. They are pragmatically motivated, have syntactic
analogs and follow the regular stress pattern (the primary stress on the head
of the rightmost iambic foot in the phonological word. The secondary stress
appears to fall on alternating syllables counting from left to right).
On the other hand, noun incorporation is a
morphological construction that entails a syntactic relationship between the
verb and the incorporated noun, as was noted by Mithun (1984; 1986; 1999; 2000)
for other languages. Moreover, it can produce the promotion of the possessor to
object (i.e. (3)-(4)):
(3) ( x)(
x )
/n̩.wù.wé.ja/
n-wu+wey-a
1SUB-do+clothes-IC
I get
dressed.
(4) ( x)(
x
)
/n̩.wù.ha.wé.ja/
n-wu+ha-wey-a
1SUB-do+2POSS-clothes-IC
I
dress you.
At the end of the new verb, a suffix -a is added closing the morphosyntactic
construction. The prosodic structure, as examples (1)-(4) show, highlights the
morphosyntactic edge of the two elements of the word.
Semantically, the verb that results from the noun
incorporation denotes a single meaning that generally refers to a traditional
or daily activity.
This paper is a contribution in several senses. Firstly,
very little is known about prosodic phenomena in other Chaco languages and,
therefore, the relationship between word-formation processes and prosody has
not been discussed. Secondly, the morphology-phonology and morphology-syntax interactions
are also frequent in other word-formation processes in the languages of the
area. For that reason they represent an interesting topic for the studies on morphology.
Lastly, one of the most striking linguistic phenomena in polysynthetic
languages is the multilevel interaction in word-formation and the way in which
the language prioritizes one level over another. In this sense, this paper offers
new data for theoretical studies on morphology.