Good evening, afternoon, or morning to you, people of r/conlangs. Today's Saturday, and that means it's time for another typological paper! Once again, there will be some prompts for you to discuss in the comments.
Instrumental Prefixes in Amerindian Languages: an overview to their meanings, origin and functions (Palancar)
This week's paper was submitted by my friend u/PyrolatrousCoagulate and talks about the phenomenon of instrumental prefixes in a number of Amerindian languages from North America. The functioning of these prefixes can be illustrated using an example from Kashaya Pomo, where there are different prefixes for when actions that are performed using different body parts. Later in the paper it becomes clearer that not only body part instruments may be encoded by such prefixes, but also other semantic categories like natural forces (fire/heat, cold, water) or object classifiers (stone-like objects, sharp-edged objects). Let's move onto the prompts now:
- Are there instrumental prefixes similar to those discussed in the paper in your language?
- If not, how does your language express such meanings? (E.g. by noun incorporation)
- How do instrumental constructions in general work in your language?
Remember to try to comment on other people's languages
Submit your papers here!
So, that's about it for this week's edition. See you next Saturday, and happy conlanging!