Matter borrowing, pattern borrowing and typological rarities in the Gran Chaco of South America
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Matter borrowing, pattern borrowing and typological rarities in the Gran Chaco of South America Luca Ciucci1
Received: 24 May 2018 / Accepted: 9 June 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The present paper explores the intersection between typological rarities, matter borrowing and pattern borrowing in the Gran Chaco of South America. In this region the only two living Zamucoan languages are spoken: Ayoreo and Chamacoco. Zamucoan has been for a long time in contact with the other languages of the area, in particular with the Guaycuruan and Mataguayan families. I analyze some rare features of Zamucoan, which developed through language contact or spread to neighboring languages. The reconstruction of Proto-Zamucoan permits us to understand better what has happened in terms of contact, or to figure out the development of rare characteristics involved in language contact: an example is Chamacoco clusivity, introduced via pattern borrowing. The formation of the Chamacoco first person plural exclusive is unusual; in addition, the pronominal system has acquired a split between a plural and a ‘greater plural’, a pattern borrowing from Nivaˆcle (Mataguayan). Some features spread from Chamacoco to Kadiwéu (Guaycuruan), two languages with a well-documented story of contact. These are: (i) The affix order in the third person plural of Chamacoco verbs, where number prefix precedes person prefix; (ii) The marking of gender and number of possessive classifiers, found in the Kadiwéu classifier for domestic animals. Other unusual features discussed here are voiceless nasals, para-hypotaxis and traces of egophoricity. Keywords Affix order · Clusivity · Egophoricity · Greater plural · Language contact · Possessive classifiers · Zamucoan · Guaycuruan · Mataguayan · Chaco
B L. Ciucci
[email protected]
1
Language and Culture Research Centre (LCRC), The Cairns Institute, James Cook University, PO Box 6811, Cairns, QLD 4870, Australia
L. Ciucci
1 Introduction The presence of rare typological features is a key to understanding the limits of variation in human language. This paper will present a case study of how unusual linguistic structures contribute to expanding our knowledge about contact-induced change. I will discuss the borrowing of typologically rare morphological patterns and features between Zamucoan and other languages of the Gran Chaco in South America, in the light of the interaction of MAT borrowing and PAT borrowing (for a terminological introduction, cf. Gardani 2020b). The rarity of the features analyzed makes it unlikely that they are independent innovations, thus being stronger evidence for borrowing. While it is generally recognized that some areal diffusion took place in the Chaco, which was also proposed as a linguistic area (Comrie et al. 2010, among others), studies on language contact in the Chaco are still inchoate. There is indeed a lack of information for several languages, and even those which have a good reference grammar may present remarkable, but under-investigated, dialectal variation. Th
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