Abstract
This article compares the person paradigms of Baure, a Southern Arawakan language of Bolivian Amazonia, to those of other Southern Arawakan languages. It is argued that, in spite of the phonetic variations found in the Arawakan languages, the person paradigms in the various languages trace back to a single person paradigm, which is proposed here for Southern Arawakan. The person formatives were presumably free forms or clitics, which appeared in different positions to fulfill different functions. In many Arawakan languages, the same forms further grammaticalized into more bound affixes. The proto-forms had a CV structure, which is not present in all Arawakan languages today, due to phonetic erosion. The paradigm most likely distinguished 1sg, 2sg, 3sgm, 3sgf, 1pl, 2pl, and 3pl forms. In addition, there may have been an unspecified third-person subject marker.
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