Recursion in Tupi-Guarani languages
Marcia Maria Damaso Vieira-Museu Nacional/UFRJ
In this paper, we aim to investigate the grammatical domais in which recursion is allowed to
apply in some Tupi-Guarani languages, such as Guarani and Tupinambá (extinct), in order
to discuss the properties and the kinds of such process. The languages under investigation
are interesting due to the fact that they seem to exhibit recursion at both the syntatic and
the morphological levels. In (5), for instance, sentence embedding in Tupinambá is accomplished by verb incorporation which seems to be syntatic in nature. Among the recursive
constructions we have observed and registered, we can cite: 1
Possessives
1. Ara-r-u-i-ru-r-a’y-r-o
‘ Ara’s father’s friend’s son’s house’’2
Ara-gn-father-gn-friend-gn-son-gn-house (Guarani)
Serial verbs
2. Ajaka o-japo o-iny
basket 3-make 3-seat
o-iko-vy
3-be-ss
‘He is making a basket (seated)
(Guarani)
Complement embedding
3. [Ndee re-japo [a-ikuaa-aguã[ajaka a-japo-aguã]]]
You
2-make 1-learn-dep basket 1-make-dep (Guarani)
‘You made me learn how to make baskets’
4. Nd-ere-abá-nupãnupã-epia’-potar-i pe?
Neg-2-man-beat-see-want-neg int. (Tupinambá)
‘Don’t you want to see someone beat the man?’ ( Lemos Barbosa, 1956)
Causative
5. ixy Ara o-mo-nhe-mo-porã ‘The mother made Ara make herself beautiful’
Mother Ara 3-caus-refl-caus-beautiful ( Guarani)
In order to develop our research we will do field work among the Guarani people living in
the State of Paraná, south of Brazil, to collect the relevant data and we will investigate the
Tupinambá registers available , based on the generative framework (Roeper ( 2010), Lander
and Letuchy (2010) ).
1. Abbreviations: caus.=causative;dep.=dependent;gn.=genitive;int.=interrogative;neg.=negative;
refl.=reflexive;ss=same subject.
2. The house of the son of the friend of the father of Ara’
Bibliography
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