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This talk surveys the morphological structure of body-part terms in Itonama, a virtually extinct language isolate once spoken in Magdalena, a small town in the Amazonian lowlands of northeastern Bolivia, and its surroundings.
Event details of ACLC Seminar | Mily Crevels
Date
15 November 2024
Time
16:00 -17:00
Location
P.C. Hoofthuis
Room
1.04

I will discuss the relation between body-part terms and a series of extremely productive derivational locative and directional prefixes – as cho- ‘inside’ in (1), which play an important role in predicate locatives and word formation in general. Moreover, I will try to give an explanation for the high number of body-part terms (ca. 50%) with reduplicated elements (2), which, interestingly, are also found in locative nouns (3). Finally, I will try to draw a parallel between Itonama body-part terms and Pano-Takanan body-part prefixes (Fleck 2012; Zariquiey & Fleck 2012; Zariquiey & Valenzuela 2022).    

 

(1)                  

ihwana cho-’eta ah-mi-ku
Juan inside-clf:standing.sg 3sg-rel-house
‘Juan is at home.’ (lit. ‘in his house’)

 

(2)

-chochono 

uh-kay-chochono ‘knee joint'

uh-pa-kos-chochono ‘throat’                                                            

-chachano       

uh-ka-chachano ‘eyelid’

oh-ni-was-chachano ‘shin’

-kakano

uh-mu-kakano ‘upper leg                                                                                         

uh-pa-chu-kakano ‘shoulder

-papano

uh-ka-papano ‘jaw joint, cheek’

uh-ma-papano ‘wrist’

 

(3)                  

oh-chochono ‘the inside’                                       

uh-na-chochono ‘the inside of an oxcart’                                                                                                                                              

uh-nu-chachano  ‘point (of an arrow)’

uh-wa-chachano ‘edge (of the village/ forest)’

uh-chas-kakano  ‘corner’                                                    

uh-na-kakano ‘top, the high place’                                                                                                                                      

uh-mas-cha-papano ‘branch (of a tree)’

uh-papano ‘the highest point of the roof’

 

References

Fleck, David W. 2012. Body-part prefixes in Panoan and Takanan. Paper presented at

Amazónicas 4, April 27, 2012, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima.

http://repositorio.pucp.edu.pe/index/handle/123456789/172802.

Zariquiey Biondi, Roberto, and David W. Fleck. 2012. Prefixation in Kashibo-Kakataibo: Synchronic or diachronic derivation? International Journal of American Linguistics 78(3): 385–409.

Zariquiey, Roberto, and Pilar M. Valenzuela. 2022. Body-part nouns, prefixation, incorporation, and compounding in Panoan and Takanan: Evidence for the Pano-Takanan hypothesis? In The Grammar of Body-Part Expressions: A View from the Americas, ed. by Roberto Zariquiey and Pilar M. Valenzuela, 441–466. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  

P.C. Hoofthuis

Room 1.04
Spuistraat 134
1012 VB Amsterdam