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1 General Characteristics of Amahuaca
Amahuaca grammar strongly reflects the notions of attention flow and viewpoint. Attention flow determines the linear order of sentence constituents, and viewpoint refers to the speaker’s perception of
a situation.
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Consequently, word and clause order, and an extensive morphology marking case, tenseaspect, focus central element of a sentence, pragmatic considerations, and evidentiality dominate
the morphosyntactic strategy of the grammar. Like all Panoan languages, Amahuaca is highly agglutinative. Operators are suffixes and some function as clitics that are phonologically bound to the
last constituent of a clause or sentence. It is not unusual to attach tense-aspect-person-mood morphemes to a noun or pronoun, or case markers to verb phrases. Likewise, clause-level evidential operators can be
suffixed to almost any constituent. There is strong indication that the whole sentence, rather than the constituent marked, is the scope of the affixation.
As is typical in clause-chaining languages, Amahuaca distinguishes between independent and dependent clauses. Independent clauses are inflected for tense-aspect-person-mood, and usually are
sentence final. Dependent clauses carry the IR-morphology. Again following the general trend, Amahuaca is best classified as an SOV language Wise 1979, but
not in an exclusive sense. Whereas dependent clauses particularly clauses in a chain with IR- morphology strongly prefer SOVSV word order, independent clauses and sentences display more
freedom. Their word order depends on verbal aspect
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and pragmatic considerations which in the context of this paper means that a sentence constituent or a clause is considered prominent. While independent
sentences in unmarked aspect have SOVSV word order e.g. 1 below, those in marked aspect display OVSVS word order e.g. 2 below. Other orders OVSVS in unmarked aspect and SOVSV in marked
aspect are clearly pragmatically marked e.g. 3a, 3b below.
1.1 The case-marking system
The case-marking system is basically tripartite with ergative, absolutive, and nominative cases Table 1.1.
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In pragmatically neutral independent clauses, split ergativity is governed by verbal aspect. 1 Unmarked aspect, transitive and intransitive verb.
a. Xano -n -mun maninha -Ø vi -xo
-hnu.
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woman-ERG-TH bananas-ABS get-3PAST.PFTV-DECL
‘The woman gotbrought bananas.’ b. Xano -vaun -mun maninha -Ø
vi -xo -hnu.
woman-ERG.PL-TH bananas-ABS get-3PAST.PFTV-DECL
‘The women gotbrought bananas.’
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I am adopting the terms “attention flow” and “viewpoint” from DeLancey 1981.
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I am taking the terminology on aspect and markedness from Comrie 1976.
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The data in this paper are presented in practical orthography, shown here as phonemic, [phonetic], and {practical}:
a [a] = {a}; i [i] = {i}; o [o, u] = {o}; ɯ [ï, i
y
] = {u};
~
[
~
, VN] = {Vn}; p [p, b] = {p}; t [t, d] = {t}; k [k, g] = {c, qu}; Ɂ [Ɂ] = {h}; ts [ts, tθ = {tz}; ch [ʧ] = {ch}; j [ȿ, x] = {x};
h [h] = {j}; s [ s, ŝ] = {z}; sh [ʃ] = {sh}; m [m, m
b
] = {m}; n [n, n
d
] = {n}; r [ř] = {r}; w [w, ß] = {v}; y [y] = {y} Accents are generally not written Shell and Wise 1971:28–29.
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h Ø n after a stressed syllable. Other examples are 2b, 9a, and 10.
c. Hun povi -Ø -mun nashi-xo -hnu.
my sibling-ABS-TH bathe-3PAST.PFTV-DECL
‘My sibling bathed.’ d. Hun povi -vo
-mun nashi-xo -hnu.
my siblings-ABS.PL-TH bathe-3PAST.PFTV-DECL
‘My siblings bathed.’ 2 Marked aspect, transitive and intransitive verb.
a. Maninha-Ø -mun vi -hax huha -Ø
-hqui -nu. bananas-ABS-TH
get-3PAST.PF mother-ABS -3ACT -DECL ‘Mother has gottenbrought bananas.’
b. Nashi-mun-ax hun povi -Ø -hqui -nu.
bathe-TH -PAST.PF my sibling-ABS-3ACT-DECL ‘My sibling has bathed.’ Lit.: ‘Bathing is what my sibling has been doing.’
c. Nashi-mun-ax hun povi -vo
-hqui -nu. bathe-TH -PAST.PF my siblings-ABS.PL-3ACT-DECL
‘My siblings have bathed.’ Lit.: ‘Bathing is what my siblings have been doing.’ These examples illustrate that in pragmatically neutral contexts, SOVSV constituent order is used in
unmarked aspect and OVSVS in marked aspect. The clause-initial constituents in these examples receive the clitic -mun ‘theme’. The following constituents are found in initial position: any subject governed by
a verb in unmarked aspect 1a-d, direct objects 2a, and intransitive verbs in marked aspect 2b, c. Examples 3a, b illustrate the tripartite case-marking system in contexts with pragmatically marked
subject: 3 Marked aspect, transitive and intransitive, pragmatically marked subject.
a. Xano -n -mun maninha-Ø vi -hax
-qui -hnu. woman-ERG-TH
bananas-ABS get-PAST.PF-3ACT-DECL ‘It is the woman who has gottenbrought bananas.’
b. Joni-x -mun ca-hax
-qui -hnu. man-NOM-TH
go-PAST.PF-3ACT-DECL ‘It is the man who has gone.’
c. Joni-vaux -mun vo -hax
-qui -hnu. man-NOM.PL-TH
go.PL -PAST.PF-3ACT-DECL ‘It is the men who have gone.’
Table 1.1. Case-marking system Agent
ergative ObjSubj
absolutive Subject
nominative Singular
Plural -n
-vaun -Ø
-vo -x
-vaux As mentioned above, SOV and SV orders in marked aspects are pragmatically marked. Evidence for
this claim is that these orders are infrequent in discourse, and appear in contrastive environments Chafe 1976.
As Table 1.1 reflects, in the case-marking system neither the syntactic terms subject and object nor the semantic concepts of agent and patient are adequate. They need to be redefined.
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1.2 Tenseaspect system
