Atelier Morphosyntaxe -- The imperative domain in Ye’kwana
(par visioconférence) Natalia Cáceres (U. Oregon)
15h-16h30
ISH, André Bollier
!!! exceptionnellement à 15h et en salle André Bollier car il s'agit d'une visioconférence
In Ye’kwana, a Cariban language spoken in southern Venezuela and northern Brazil, there are five different dedicated constructions for expressing the imperative domain. Of these, the most frequent construction in recorded texts is the 2nd person A or S imperative, followed by the hortative-jussive-optative which functions with all possible persons, then by the supplicative or permissive–also available for all persons, the prohibitive which functions for 2nd person A, S or P, the fifth and less frequent construction being the one dedicated to expressing admonition or apprehension, also with no person marking restrictions. Interestingly, there are two additional grammatical features that are unique to this domain. Across the family, it is with the imperatives that associated motion morphemes appear: Ye’kwana presents only the cross-Cariban allative -ta suffix but other languages of the family have innovated additional contrasts. Furthermore, the five constructions combine in Ye’kwana with a prefix ön-/an- with two different meanings: negative for the prohibitive and the admonitive and sociative for the rest. A cognate ön-/an- morpheme is only found in the Cariban languages of Venezuela where it occurs exclusively with the declarative negative form of verb stems. This talk illustrates all the uses of the five imperative constructions in Ye’kwana highlighting its specificities in a comparative light and with respect to typology.