Body-Part Morphemes in Matis (Panoan)

Abstract

Grammatical and pragmatic aspects of body-part constructions represent relevant theme for typological and functional researches in the Amerindian languages. Despite the researches on body-part morphemes in the Matis language since the beginning of the 21st century, studies have been restricted to brief inventories and to the description of isolated clauses. In the present article, I describe the extended body-part inventory and the typological aspects of the Matis body-part morphemes. In doing so, it is proposed the systemic functional analysis of its lexicogrammatical features and pragmatic properties in contextual constructions of narratives collected in fieldwork. The findings of this analysis shows that, in clause chaining constructions, the functional relation of body-part morphemes and its possessor is established on referential progression by means of the participant agreement in the switch-reference system. Moreover, prefixed verbs can be preceded by the correspondent body-part nouns to convey focus expression, and polysyllabic nouns can also indicate topic function when structured at the beginning of the clause. The systemic functional analysis of the body-part morphemes through textual data seek to collaborate on the knowledge of the interaction between lexicogrammatical and pragmatic systems in the Matis language.