Pervasive nominalization in Yukuna: An Arawak language of Colombian Amazonia

  Contact person

Magdalena LEMUS SERRANO

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Scientific framework and objectives

This dissertation focuses on Yukuna (ISO 693-3: ycn, Glottocode: yucu1253), an Arawak language of Colombian Amazonia. Yukuna is a definitely endangered, understudied language, spoken by under one thousand speakers in various communities along the Mirití-Paraná River in North-Western Amazonia. This dissertation is organized in two parts. Part I provides a grammar sketch of the language (119pp.), on the basis of a first hand corpus of texts (25000 words, 4,5 hours of recording). Part II provides an in-depth description and discussion of nominalizations and nominalization-based constructions in Yukuna. Nominalizations in Yukuna are pervasive in discourse, and versatile in their functions. Indeed, there are eight different nominalization markers in Yukuna, used with ambiguous verb forms that display both verbal and nominal features. These verb forms are incredibly frequent, found in average in 80% of sentences in the corpus of texts. Verb forms carrying these markers are found in a variety of syntactic positions, and with different functions, from the prototypical referential use of nominalizations as arguments within verbal clauses, to other, less prototypical uses such as in relative clauses, adverbial clauses, clause-chaining, and even as TAM and discourse markers in main clauses. Describing the complexity of Yukuna nominalizations in terms of their internal structure, external distribution and corpus frequency represents a major methodological challenge. This dissertation aims to present the complexities of Yukuna nominalizations in a way that is both thorough and systematic.

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  Financial support

• Contrat Doctoral ASLAN
  
  Labex ASLAN - Université de Lyon
  2016-2019
• ELDP - Small Grant (SG)
  
  ELDP - Arcadia - SOAS, London University
  2015-2016

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