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Grammatical Relations in Tariana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2008

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Affiliation:
Australian National University, Linguistics, Arts, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia. Email aikaling@fac.anu.edu.au
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Abstract

This article deals with the marking of grammatical relations in Tariana, North-Arawakan, and how this marking interrelates with topicality, definiteness and other discourse characteristics of nominal constituents. The following four case-marking systems are distinguished in Tariana: (i) a subject vs object case system, used with personal pronouns with animate reference; (ii) a case system characterized by an enclitic -nuku for marking topicalized and referential non-subjects, used with all types of nominal constituents; (iii) an ergative case-marking used with all types of nominal constituents under emphasis in A function, the ergative case marker being the same as instrumental; (iv) a system of peripheral cases – locative and instrumental, used with all types of nominal constituents, but obligatory only with pronouns. The overt case-marking in Tariana is related to such parameters as topicality, definiteness and emphasis, and consequently is dependent on the structure of discourse. I will argue that the unusual case-marking patterns in Tariana corroborate cross-linguistic generalizations on a dependency between case-marking and topical properties of NPs in languages with an opposition between marked and unmarked case forms.

Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 17 , Special Issue 2: Special issue on LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY , December 1994 , pp. 201 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

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