Morphosyntactic properties of Chibchan verbal person marking
Matthias Pache · Linguistic Discovery · 2015
In typological terms, Chibchan is among the more heterogeneous language families in the Americas.This language family may therefore be considered as a relevant source of information on typological diversity and change.Chibchan languages are spoken in an area that extends from Honduras in the west to Venezuela in the east (see Map 1).In this language family, Adelaar (2007) has noted an uneven distribution of morphological complexity in terms of the number of categories encoded by bound elements.As a rule of thumb, the morphological complexity of Chibchan languages spoken in the eastern parts of the distribution area is relatively high.In contrast, several Chibchan languages spoken in Central America (Panama, Costa Rica) are somewhat less complex, morphologically speaking, that is, they tend to make use of more analytic constructions.One core area of typological diversity within Chibchan is verbal person marking, with synthetic verbal person marking attested for instance in Muisca and Barí (eastern part of the distribution area), and more analytic strategies attested for instance in Cabécar and Guaymí (central-western part of the distribution area) (see ( 1) and ( 2)). 2 Barí (1) 'i-bɾa-mi 3.IO-speak-2SG.SBJ 'Talk with him/her!' (Héctor Achirabú, p.c.) Cabécar (2) d͡ ʒís te bá sũwẽɾá buɽía 1SG AD 2SG see.FUT tomorrow 'I will see you (sg.) tomorrow.