Search for: All records

We propose a reconstruction of several sound changes in the history of A’ingae, a language isolate spoken in Ecuador and Colombia, using evidence from the phonology and lexicon of the modern language. Crucial to this reconstruction process is distinguishing ordinary inherited lexical items from borrowed forms, ideophones, and forms which are morphologically complex, each of which may sometimes exhibit different patterns. The major element of the reconstruction is a set of related changes in nasality. We derive the prenasalized series of stops and affricates from the voiceless unaspirated series, based on reanalysis of preceding nasal codas, which would have been the only permitted codas other than glottal stops. The voiceless unaspirated and prenasalized series became contrastive word-initially as the result of deletion of certain word-initial nasal vowels. Coda nasals also coalesced with following glides, producing a new palatal nasal phoneme. Remaining nasal codas later developed into nasality on vowels. We also propose a set of more speculative palatalization processes, alterations to the velar approximant, and developments involving diphthongs. All of these changes have substantially altered the phonological appearance of A’ingae. Improving our understanding of the form it had further in the past may facilitate identification of its affiliation with a language family or identification of loanwords. 

ABSTRACT Apprehensionalityrefers to the semantic domain of negative prospective epistemic modality and the formal expressions used to encode it. In this article, we break down theapprehensional situationinto five prototypical components: (I) future reference, (II) possibility, (III) negative evaluation, (IV) avertive intent, and (V) a preferred action. In doing so, we propose a framework for comparing synchronic and diachronic aspects of the semantics and expression of apprehensional modality across languages. We discuss several recent formal accounts of three apprehensional morphemes—Francez's account of Biblical Hebrewpen, Dąbkowski and AnderBois's of A'ingae‐sa'ne, and Phillips's of Australian Kriolbambai—relate their formalisms to the apprehensional situation schema, and evaluate their predictions. We summarise previous findings on the grammaticalisation pathways towards and among apprehensional morphemes. We find that apprehensionals grammaticalise from a wide range of sources, including components I–IV of the apprehensional schema. Among the apprehensional functions themselves, both subordination and insubordination are commonly encountered. 

Abstract We describe and analyze the semantics of rationale and precautioning clauses (i.e. in order to- and lest-clauses) through a detailed case study of two operators in A’ingae (or Cofán, iso 639-3: con, an Amazonian isolate): the infinitive -ye ‘inf’ and the apprehensional -sa’ne ‘appr.’ We provide a new account of rationale semantics and the first formal account of precautioning semantics. We propose that in structures such as [$$p$$ [(in order) to$$q$$]] or [$$p$$ [$$q$$-ye]], the rationale operator (underlined) encodes modal semantics where the goal worlds of the actor responsible for $$p$$ achieve $$q$$. In structures such as [$$p$$ [lest$$q$$]] or [$$p$$ [$$q$$-sa’ne]], the precautioning operator encodes modal semantics where the actor’s goal worlds avoid a recoverable situation $$r$$ which entails $$q$$ ($$r\Rightarrow q$$). We observe and account for three apparent asymmetries within the domain of rationale and precautioning semantics, which we dub precautioning semantics asymmetry, rationale polarity asymmetry, and precautioning encoding asymmetry. We thus elucidate the relation between rationale and precautioning clauses and make substantial predictions with respect to the cross-linguistic inventories of rationale and precautioning operators. 

This paper examines switch reference (SR) in A’ingae, an understudied isolate language from Amazonian Ecuador. We present a theoretically informed survey of SR, identifying three distinct uses of switch reference: in clause chaining, adverbial clauses, and so-called ‘bridging’ clause linkage. We describe the syntactic and semantic properties of each use in detail, the first such description for A’ingae, showing that the three constructions differ in important ways. While leaving a full syntactic analysis to future work, we argue that these disparate properties preclude a syntactic account that unifies these three constructions to the exclusion of other environments without SR. Conversely, while a full semantic account is also left to future work, we suggest that a unified semantic account in terms of discourse coherence principles appears more promising. In particular, we propose that switch reference in A’ingae occurs in all and only the constructions that are semantically restricted to non-structuring coordinating coherence relations in the sense of Segmented Discourse Representation Theory. 

This paper examines a particular type of clause linkage (‘bridging’) in A’ingae, an en-dangered isolate spoken in Amazonian Ecuador and Colombia.We propose a formalcharacterization of its meaning (to our knowledge the first formal account for any language)that relies crucially on two SDRT coherence relations: NARRATION and BACKGROUND.We motivate this characterization with textual data and elicited data from context-relativefelicity judgments, and propose to derive it from independently observable facts aboutprosody, coordination, and anaphora in the language