Pre-Historical Language Contact in Peruvian Amazonia

Rojas-Berscia, Luis Miguel

doi:10.1075/coll.58

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 162 publications

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“…a bundle of historical markers (q.v. Rojas-Berscia 2021). This layer would be the result of routinised, and eventually fossilised, linguistic practices due to a specific relevant social force.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The contact-based emergence of the subject-focus construction in Wolof

Bourdeau,

Rojas-Berscia

2023

AVT

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In this article, we focus on the origin of the Wolof subject-focus construction (SFC) from a dynamic perspective. In Wolof, argument focus is expressed morpho-syntactically by means of copulaless cleft constructions consisting of the juxtaposition of the focus and a free relative clause. The free relative clause is headed by a determiner, which takes the form a in the case of the SFC. The determiner a is not found anywhere else in the language outside of SFC. We hypothesise that Wolof borrowed its SFC from Berber languages. The sociohistorical scenario, based on oral tradition, could have been the emergence of Wolof, as a crucible of contact between peoples of diverse origin including Berber groups. This finding is strengthened by the occurrence of other elements common to Wolof and Berber languages, such as clitic attraction, negation, copula insertion, as well as a number of lexical parallelisms.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The contact-based emergence of the subject-focus construction in Wolof

Bourdeau,

Rojas-Berscia

2023

AVT

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Dynamic Linguistics

Rojas-Berscia

2024

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As opposed to static approaches, the dynamic approach (DA) emphatically distances itself from the routinised use of the concept of language (as in the English, French or Quechua language), the sole reliance on the dichotomised model of language history explained by vertical change (the Stammbaum approach) and horizontal change (the contact approach), and the eccentrification of creole language emergence. The notion of a DA to language surfaced at several points in time, reaching two climaxes, namely the advent of Wave Theory (Schmidt 1872) and the incorporation of variation in the machinery of a modular approach to grammar (Bailey 1973; Bickerton 1971; Seuren 1982). In a nutshell, the DA advocates for the polylectal nature of linguistic competence (in the transformationalist/generative semantic sense), the fluid nature of language variation over time and space, as well as for the notions of functionality and the Principle of Semantic Transparency as guiding forces throughout the history of languoids.1 In this article, the basic tenets of this approach are outlined, embedded in a historical frame within the advent of Generative Semantics and variation-centred approaches to language. These tenets are illustrated with case studies from languoids used in Northwestern Amazonia, Balgo in Western Australia, as well as Senegambia in West Africa.

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The Marañón-Huallaga exchange route

Berscia

Eloranta

2019

LIAMES: Ling. Indig. Am.

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In this article we claim that stone classifier-based numeral systems in a number of unrelated North-western South American language families/languages such as Kawapanan, Cholón-Hibito, Munichi, and, tentatively, Quingnam emerged due to calquing or loan translation (Weinreich 1963; Epps 2006, 2013). In addition, although the donor language remains unknown, we argue for this to be a case of a poorly attested grammaticalisation path of numeral classifiers and numerals, namely STONE>CLASSIFIER, as presented in Conklin (1981), for languages such as Gorontalo, Kam-Muang, White Tai and Western Austronesian languages (Conklin 1981, 233, 234; mentioned by Aikhenvald 2000, 446). Moreover, ethnohistorical and historical evidence (Reeve 1994, 125) suggests that pre-Hispanic societies in the Marañón-Huallaga area shared a salt-stone-based trading system, henceforth SBT. This is remarkable, since other adjacent language families, such as Quechua and Chicham, do not show such a pattern for the formation of their own numerals. We claim, tentatively, that these common trade networks may be the sociohistorical motivation for the diffusion of this calquing pattern in the area.

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Pre-Historical Language Contact in Peruvian Amazonia

Cited by 5 publications

References 162 publications

The contact-based emergence of the subject-focus construction in Wolof

The contact-based emergence of the subject-focus construction in Wolof

Dynamic Linguistics

The Marañón-Huallaga exchange route

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