Aproximación tipológica a las lenguas indígenas del Gran Chaco. Rasgos compartidos entre toba (familia guaycurú) y maká (familia mataco-mataguayo)

Abstract

This paper analyzes and compares some morphosyntactic and lexical features of two indigenous languages of the Gran Chaco region belonging to different linguistic families: Toba (Guaycuru family) and Maka (Mataco-Mataguayo family). The traits examined are: a) order of the constituents, b) possession and alignment of persona, c) nominal classification and deixis, and d) negation. The analysis shows that there are obvious structural and functional similarities between the languages studied. The questions that arise from the analysis and comparison of data from the Toba and Maka languages are: What is the best hypothesis to explain why languages from different language families show similar typological profiles? Is there a single explanation or are the similarities grounded in a combination of factors? And which similarities are more likely to be explained by universal causes or genetic relationships between languages and which are clearly attributable to contact between languages and the cultural and ecological environment of their speakers? The analyzed data point in the same direction as the proposal by Aikhenvald 2006 (quoting Owens 1996) for which the similarity of flexional paradigms of basic vocabulary and syntactic structures is a clear indication of the genetic relationships between languages, while the similarity between pragmatic phenomena seem to be rather the result of geographical proximity and contact between languages.