Zamucoan Person Marking as a Perturbed System*

Abstract

This paper analyzes the Zamucoan system of Person markers: personal pronouns, verbal and possessive inflection. Comparing the three documented languages (Ayoreo and Chamacoco, currently spoken, and extinct Old Zamuco), one can reconstruct for a very ancient stage of this language family an agglutinating structure for both personal pronouns and verbal inflection, with Person and Number dealt with by, respectively, prefixes and suffixes. However, possessive inflection could not be accommodated within this system, since the noun suffix can only express possessum Number, while possessor Number has to be expressed by a dedicated prefix. This structural conflict forced the Zamucoan languages to attempt various solutions, departing from the original agglutinating logic.