Pigáxio is a Carib a posteriori set in the Alto-Xingu region of Mato Grosso, Brazil. In this short write-up I will consider the various morphosyntactic aspects of Pigáxio possession, while also providing insight into the diachronic happenings that are important with respect to this matter. Possessive constructions in Carib languages can be characterized by a few simple parameters: the word order within the possessive construction is possessor-possessed, the construction is head-marking (i.e. the possessed is marked instead of the possessor), and in most cases, there is a suffix which marks the noun as being possessed. This "possessed" case marker is rather idiosyncratic and as Spike Gildea, one of the leading researchers on the field of Carib linguistics, states in his 1998 book on comparative Carib morphosyntax: "[The morphology of the possessed case marker] is sufficiently irregular to require reconstruction of each lexical item with its own idiosyncratic possessive form." In the 23 years since the publication of this book, research on Carib linguistics has made incredible progress (cf. Gildea [2012:1-2]). Hence I decided to reach out to Gildea himself and inquire about the reconstruction of the possessed case marker, but he has yet to respond. If I receive a reply, I will make sure to inform those who are interested. Now, let's talk about Pigáxio.
The origin of the possessive prefixes
Just like all other Carib languages, Pigáxio employs personal possessive prefixes that are attached to the possessed noun (cf. above). These prefixes are reconstructed in Meira et al. (2012:489) and shown in table 1, along with to the Pigáxio reflexes:
|
Proto-Carib |
Pigáxio |
|
|
|
_V |
_C |
| 1 |
*u-j- |
j- |
u- |
| 2 |
*ô-j-¹ |
aw- |
a- |
| 3 |
*i- |
∅- |
i- |
| 1+2 |
*k- |
k- |
kɨ- |
| 3R |
*t- |
t- |
tɨ- |
| NP |
*j- |
j-/∅- |
— |
Table 1: Proto-Carib personal possessive prefixes and Pigáxio derivatives
It is important to note that the vowel-initial allomorphs for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person trigger vowel change so that a subsequent ə changes to e. This may have severe morphophonological consequences, and causes irregularities in some nouns. The NP marker derived from *j-, glossed as LK by me (following Meira & Gildea [2009]).², is very interesting in its distribution. It appears if and only if the possessed noun starts with a vowel and its possessor immediately precedes it; its realizations vary from a vowel change akin to the one described above, to j- before other vowels.
These possessive prefixes are almost equivalent to the absolutive markers that appear on verbs, and are in fact cognates; however I will not go into detail about the relationship between these prefixes, since that would go beyond the scope of the discussion. In addition to the prefixes shown in table 1, there is also the 1+3 prefix txi(h)- , which is a new innovation inspired by the Kuikúro marker ti(s)-, whose own etymology is unknown (dos Santos 2007:76, Franchetto 1986:158).
The usage of possessive prefixes
Morphosyntactically, there is a split between SAP (=1st and 2nd person) and 3rd person possession.³ While 3rd person possessive prefixes appear in complementary distribution with the respective free possessor, SAP prefixes and free possessors may optionally co-occur. This can be summarized as follows:
I. Complementary distribution between prefix and free possessor (3rd person):
POSSESSOR POSSESSED
prefix-POSSESSED
*POSSESSOR prefix-POSSESSED
II. Optional co-occurrence of prefix and free possessor (SAP):
POSSESSOR POSSESSED
prefix-POSSESSED
POSSESSOR prefix-POSSESSED
Proto-Carib is reconstructed as originally exhibiting the first type of syntactic pattern for all persons, whether it be SAP or 3rd (Gildea 1998:112-113). The second type of syntactic pattern is, according to Gildea, an innovation that was not present in Proto-Carib, but developed in several daughter languages (e.g. Hixkaryana, De'kwana, Yukpa etc.). In addition to these two types, there is another third innovation that isn't present in Pigáxio, but in other Carib languages: in some languages, the personal prefix becomes obligatory, and the construction POSSESSOR POSSESSED therefore becomes ungrammatical.
Now let's take a look at some proper examples for these patterns. Example (1) showcases the complementary distribution between prefix and free possessor in 3rd person possessive constructions, as well as the functioning of the NP marker j- while in (2) we can observe the optional co-occurrence of SAP possessives. Using a free pronoun instead of the personal prefix is often done to contrast between various possessors, e.g. in a conversation such as the following: A: "Did he steal Kyjiilgëëry's manioc?", B: "No, he stole my manioc".
(1a) João tʃilígə
John star
'John's star'
(1b) i-ʒílgə́-rɨ
3-star-POSSD
'his star'
(1c) *João i-ʒílgə́-rɨ
John 3-star-POSSD
(1d) João j-a:-rɨ
John LK-seed-POSSD
'John's seed(s)'
(1e) *João arɨ
John seed
(2a) kɨ:wə ẽ:-ru
1+2 eye\LK-POSSD
'our(du) eyes (emph.)'
(2b) k-əŋ-ru
1+2-eye-POSSD
'our(du) eyes'
(2c) kɨ:wə k-əŋ-ru
1+2 1+2-eye-POSSD
'our(du) eyes (emph.)'
Collective markers and past possession
Now that we have discussed the basic morphology and syntax of the possessive construction in Pigáxio, let's turn our attention to two minor aspects of possession: number marking and nominal tense.
Plurality is not a grammatical category in most Carib languages, but instead the distinction lies between non-collective ("fewer than all") and collective ("all"). Thus, an unmarked noun may be either singular or plural, but it is not considered "all" of a perceived group. A noun marked as collective is certainly plural, but is additionally considered to constitute the entirety of a group.
In Pigáxio, as in most other Carib languages, only animate nouns have a collective form, which is created by the addition of the suffix -gwo and its allomorphs. In possessive constructions, this marks the number of the possessed noun. To encode the collective number of the possessor, the word is followed by the marker komo, a cognate of -gwo. This marker is a particle, i.e. it is not attached to the stem.⁴ The examples in (3) showcase this behaviour.
(3a) a-wə́rʃ-gowo
2-woman-COLL
'your women (the ones you are related to)'
(3b) a-wérʃ-gowo komo
2-woman-COLL COLL
'the women of all of you'
Next up, past possession. Pigáxio's nominal tense system is an underdocumented topic and so far I have only been able to identify the past possessive marker -du:ru. This morpheme is derived from the Proto-Carib nominalizer *-tupu-ru 'O or Action Nominalizer, Past Tense' (Gildea 1998:122). It marks an underived noun as being formerly possessed, devalued or old; a noun marked as being formerly possessed must not take the possessed noun case marker -rɨ/-ru/-∅, since that is already incorporated into the morpheme itself. This is exemplified in (4).
(4) t-əŋ-gú:ru
3R-eye-NOM.PAST
'his/her own former eye'
Kuikúro influence
In recent years, the influence of Kuikúro on the Pigáxio language has increased immensely. Since their arrival at the Upper Xingu in the mid-1800s, the Pigáxio have lived in various places, and it was only recently that due to unknown reasons, they moved to live among other tribes. One of these tribes was the Kuikúro, which nowadays hold the remainder of Pigáxio people in their villages. Due to this extreme proximity, not only lexical items but also grammatical constructions have been borrowed from the Kuikúro language. An example of such a grammatical influence is given in the j- LK construction. As I described above, this marker appears when the possessed noun starts with a vowel and is immediately preceded by its possessor. Among the newer generations however, the usage of this marker has become deprecated due to the influence of Kuikúro, which does not employ such a relational prefix. Let us compare (5a) and (b) from Kuikúro⁵ with (5c) and (d) from Pigáxio. In (5a) and (b) we can see the absence of a cognate to j- in vowel-initial possessees. (5c) showcases the Pigáxio construction with j-, which is considered outdated and archaic by younger members of the community. (5d) presents the same meaning as (5c), but using the innovative construction; this sentence was uttered in the context of a conversation between mother and daughter, in which the daughter corrected the mother, uttering (5d) and commenting that wording it the way her mother did was annoying and old-fashioned.
(5a) Kanatú limo
children
'Kanatu's children'
(5b) Aharâtâ ótomo
people
'Aharâtâ's people'
(5c) nõrõ ewɨ́ʒ-ɨ
earth daughter\LK-POSSD?
'The earth's daughter'
(5d) nõrõ əwɨʃ
earth daughter
'The earth's daughter(s)'
Coda
This concludes my presentation of Pigáxio possessive constructions. Even though there might be a lot more to say about this, I think this post delivers a great overview of the different aspects that together form the morphosyntax of possession. I hope you all enjoyed reading this post! Maybe it inspired you to rethink your possessive system. I also hope it whets your appetite for more Amazonian linguistics! Who knows, maybe there will be more to come 😉
I primarily thank our fellow conlangers u/roipoiboy and u/mareck_ for taking another look at this post before I posted it. I'd also like to thank our community over on Discord (Join us here!) and especially #ssmc for their everlasting support. And finally I thank you, the reader, for taking the time to read this post! If you have any questions or feedback, make sure to leave a comment.
Notes
¹In Carib linguistics, ô represents a mid central to back vowel [ə~ɤ]. In Pigáxio, in isolated contexts, this vowel becomes ə.
²Also known as "neutral y-formative" (Payne & Payne 1999), "relator" (Gildea 1998) and "relational prefix" (Rodrigues 1994, Meira et al. 2012).
³The latter of which also includes the newly innovated 1+3 marker. The 1+3 possessive construction is quite idiosyncratic and cannot be easily explained using few words. I reserve the right to exclude it from this small write-up.
⁴I won't go into detail about the distinction between a (cliticized) particle and a suffix here; the interested reader might want to check out Gildea (1998:118) for a comparative overview of the difference between these morpheme types.
⁵Kuikúro data taken from Franchetto (1986:160-61).
Bibliography
- Gildea, Spike. 1998. On reconstructing grammar: Comparative Cariban morphosyntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Gildea, Spike. 2012. Linguistic studies in the Cariban family. In Campbell, Lyle and Grondona, Verónica (eds.), 441–494. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Meira, Sérgio and Gildea, Spike and Hoff, Berend J. 2010. On the Origin of Ablaut in the Cariban Family. International Journal of American Linguistics 76. 477–515.
- dos Santos, Gélsama Mara Ferreira. 2007. Morfologia Kuikuro: Gerando nomes e verbos. (Doctoral dissertation, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro).
- Franchetto, Bruna. 1986. Falar Kuikúru: Estudo Etnolinguistico de um grupo Karíbe do Alto Xingu. Volume III: Fonologia e Textos. (Doctoral dissertation, Museu Nacional da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro).
- Rodrigues, Aryon D. 1994. Grammatical affinity among Tupi, Karib, and Macro-Je. Ms., Universidade de Brasília.
- Payne, Thomas E. and Payne, Doris L. 1999. Panare: A Cariban language of central Venezuela. Ms., La Trobe University.
- Meira, Sérgio and Gildea, Spike. 2009. Property concepts in the Cariban family: adjectives, adverbs, and/or nouns. In Wetzels, W. Leo (ed.), 95–133. Utrecht: LOT.