Title: The Problem <i>Different Modern Verbal Systems and Their Synchronic Distribution</i>
Abstract: Abstract In this chapter I introduce the problem to be addressed in this study. Fully seven different independent clause verbal systems have been described across the Cariban family (and perhaps one or two more will someday be described for the southern Brazilian Cariban languages Arara, Bakairi, and Ikpeng). In a previous version of this work (Gildea 1992), I identified only two systems, which I labeled Set I (a nominative system) and Set II (an ergative system). Reduced in this way, the problem was simply stated: which system (if either) should we reconstruct to Proto Carib independent clauses, and how should we explain the genesis of the other system-where did it come from and how did it get into independent clauses in some, but not all, Cariban languages? The problem is now more complicated, in that we must ask which (if any) of the seven systems do we reconstruct to Proto Carib, and how do we derive the others from our reconstruction of Proto-Carib? For expository convenience, I give semiarbitrary labels to each of the seven: (i) Set I (inverse/split-S), (ii) Full Set II (ergative), (iii) Partial Set II (ergative), (iv) Progressive (nominative), (v) De-ergative (nominative), (vi) t-V-ce (ergative), and (vii) t-V-ce-mi (nominative). The seven systems are identified by means of six dis tinct, but interrelated, morphosyntactic properties: (i) forms and patterns of verbal personal prefixes and suffixes, (ii) verbal tense-aspect-modality (TAM) suffixes, (iii) nominal case-marking patterns, (iv) word order restrictions, (v) existence and agreement patterns of auxiliaries, and (vi) forms and morphological placement of the collective number markers. In section 2.1, I briefly characterize and illustrate each of the six systems in terms of these six properties. In 2.2, I discuss the distri bution of each system in modern Cariban languages, and in 2.3 I consider some logically possible hypotheses for how this plethora of verbal systems evolved.
Publication Year: 1998
Publication Date: 1998-09-03
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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