Some morphological elements of Maipuran Arawakan: Agreement affixes and the genitive construction

Abstract

Despite the relative importance of the Arawakan language family, the advance of historical and comparative studies in the family is at present woefully behind that of many other native American language families. This paper proposes to make a contribution toward establishing affixal cognates for Maipuran Arawakan, specifically to posit and substantiate probable Proto-Maipuran forms for the agreement affixes and the affixes of the genitive construction. Agreement prefixes which normally agree with the subject of the verb or denote the possessor in the genitive construction are posited as *nu- 1SG, *pi- 2SG, *ri- 3SG MASC, *tu- 3SG FEM, *wa- 1PL, *xi- 2PL, and *na- 3PL. Verbal agreement suffixes of the same shapes normally agree with the object or stative subject. Documentation from a wide range of Maipuran languages further substantiates a suppletive suffix with the probable proto-allomorphs *-ni, *-te, *-re, *·V# > -e #, as a possessive suffix on “alienable” nouns. Finally a *-tsi is posited as the form of an “absolute” suffix, i.e., one which indicates the abnormal unpossessed or detached form of inalienably possessed nouns.