Grammatical replication: First-person non-singular verbal indexes in Eastern Toba, Western Toba (Guaicuruan) and Tapiete (Tupi-Guaraní)

Abstract

In this paper we suggest that linguistic features can show traces of the frequency and intensity of social interactions between indigenous peoples. We focus on peoples of the alluvial fan of the Pilcomayo River (South American Chaco), and analyze first-person non-singular verbal encoding in their languages. The corpus is composed of (a) data obtained during fieldwork, (b) descriptive grammars, and (c) published reports by missionaries, army officers, and European travelers. Combining environmental and ethnohistorical information, we propose that the first-person non-singular subject verbal indexes split visible in Eastern Toba of the Lower Pilcomayo River, Western Toba from the Upper-Middle Pilcomayo River (Guaicuruan), and Tapiete of the Upper Pilcomayo River area (Tupi-Guaraní) could be an outcome of language-internal resources used by the speakers of these languages to replicate the Matacoan (Maká, Nivaclé, and Wichí) external model.