Katarzyna I. Wojtylak
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- December 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198865681
- eISBN:
- 9780191898013
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198865681.003.0005
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
Different sorts of phonological and grammatical criteria can be used to identify wordhood in Murui, a Witotoan language from Northwest Amazonia. A phonological word is determined on entirely ...
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Different sorts of phonological and grammatical criteria can be used to identify wordhood in Murui, a Witotoan language from Northwest Amazonia. A phonological word is determined on entirely phonological principles. Its key indicators include prosody (stress) and segmental phonology (vowel length). A phonological word is further produced by applying relevant phonological processes within it and not across its word boundaries. The further criterion is moraicity which requires that the minimal phonological word contains at least two moras. A grammatical word, determined entirely on grammatical principles, consists of one lexical root to which morphological processes (affixation, cliticization, and reduplication) are applied. The components of a grammatical word are cohesive and occur in a relatively fixed order. Although Murui grammatical and phonological words mostly coincide, the ‘mismatches’ include nominal compounds (that is, one phonological word consisting of two grammatical words), verbal root reduplication (one grammatical but two phonological words), and clitics.Less
Different sorts of phonological and grammatical criteria can be used to identify wordhood in Murui, a Witotoan language from Northwest Amazonia. A phonological word is determined on entirely phonological principles. Its key indicators include prosody (stress) and segmental phonology (vowel length). A phonological word is further produced by applying relevant phonological processes within it and not across its word boundaries. The further criterion is moraicity which requires that the minimal phonological word contains at least two moras. A grammatical word, determined entirely on grammatical principles, consists of one lexical root to which morphological processes (affixation, cliticization, and reduplication) are applied. The components of a grammatical word are cohesive and occur in a relatively fixed order. Although Murui grammatical and phonological words mostly coincide, the ‘mismatches’ include nominal compounds (that is, one phonological word consisting of two grammatical words), verbal root reduplication (one grammatical but two phonological words), and clitics.
Katarzyna I. Wojtylak
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- October 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198842019
- eISBN:
- 9780191878060
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198842019.003.0006
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics, Language Families
This chapter focuses on forms and functions of verbal classifiers in Murui and Mɨka, two closely related language varieties of the ‘Witoto’ dialect continuum from the Witotoan language family spoken ...
More
This chapter focuses on forms and functions of verbal classifiers in Murui and Mɨka, two closely related language varieties of the ‘Witoto’ dialect continuum from the Witotoan language family spoken in Northwest Amazonia. Murui and Mɨka verbal classifiers are used to refer to a previously mentioned referent or to re-introduce the referent into the discourse. They form a closed set of morphemes that signal the presence of S/O/peripheral arguments. ‘Witoto’ verbal classifiers interact with semantic types of verbs (they co-occur with verbs of ‘handling’ and ‘affect’), and categorize noun referents in terms of their physical properties (shape, size, structure, etc.). Further comparison of Murui and Mɨka verbal classifiers suggests that the productivity of this system has been gradually eroding in Murui as spoken today; this is unlike verbal classifiers found in older Mɨka narratives.Less
This chapter focuses on forms and functions of verbal classifiers in Murui and Mɨka, two closely related language varieties of the ‘Witoto’ dialect continuum from the Witotoan language family spoken in Northwest Amazonia. Murui and Mɨka verbal classifiers are used to refer to a previously mentioned referent or to re-introduce the referent into the discourse. They form a closed set of morphemes that signal the presence of S/O/peripheral arguments. ‘Witoto’ verbal classifiers interact with semantic types of verbs (they co-occur with verbs of ‘handling’ and ‘affect’), and categorize noun referents in terms of their physical properties (shape, size, structure, etc.). Further comparison of Murui and Mɨka verbal classifiers suggests that the productivity of this system has been gradually eroding in Murui as spoken today; this is unlike verbal classifiers found in older Mɨka narratives.
