The hispanization of Chamacoco syntax

Abstract

This paper investigates contact-driven syntactic change in Chamacoco (a.k.a. Ɨshɨr ahwoso), a Zamucoan language with about 2,000 speakers in Paraguay. Chamacoco syntax was originally characterized by a low number of conjunc-tions, like its cognate Ayoreo. Although Chamacoco shows transfers from other neighboring languages, a turning point in language change was the beginning of regular contacts with Western society around the year 1885. Since then, Spanish has exerted a growing influence on Chamacoco, affecting all levels of linguistic analysis. Most speakers are today Chamacoco-Spanish bilingual, and the lan-guage is endangered. Chamacoco has borrowed some conjunctions from Spanish, and new clause combining strategies have replaced older syntactic structures. Other function words introduced from Spanish include temporal adverbs, dis-course markers, quantifiers and prepositions. I discuss their uses, the reasons for their borrowing and their interaction with original Chamacoco function words. Some borrowed function words can combine with autochthonous conjunctions to create new subordinators that are calques from Spanish compound subor-dinating conjunctions. This resulted in remarkable syntactic complexification. Chamacoco comparatives, modeled on the Spanish ones, are also likely instances of contact-induced complexification, since there are reasons to surmise that Chamacoco originally lacked dedicated comparative structures