Tiriyó language

Tiriyó has been partially documented as part of Meira’s research with the Leiden University, in conjunction with the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. This documentation began in 1993 under Dr. Spike Gildea's Northern Brazilian Cariban Languages Documentation Project, and continued through 1999.[9] Meira’s documentation included specific focus on stress patterns, contrastive demonstratives, and locative postpositions.[9] There have been relatively few ethnographic studies on the Tiriyó, with the exception of the works by missionary Protasio Frikel and English anthropologist Peter Rivière. Between the 1950s and 1970s, Frikel wrote seven works (Frikel 1957, 1958, 1960, 1961a,b, 1964, 1971, 1973) relating to the Tiriyó.[4] Rivière has published a number of works (Rivière 1963, 1966, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1981a,b, 1984, 1987, 1988, 1994, 1995a,b, 2000) beginning in 1963, notably Marriage Among the Trio.[4] In his writing, he addresses errors made by Frikel.[4]

• The vowels (a, e, i, o, u) are very close to their usual values in, e.g., Spanish.
• The central vowel ï is usually [ɨ], but [ɯ] is also heard, especially after a velar consonant;
• The central vowel ë is usually [ə], but [ʌ] or [ɤ] are also common.

1. The fricative /s/ shows a considerable amount of variation. Some speakers have [s], others have [ç] or [s̠], or even [ʃ]. The following vowel also influences the pronunciation of /s/: [ʃ]-like realizations are more frequent before /i/ and /e/.
2. The rhotic r is often retroflex ([ɽ]) and may have some laterality ([ɺ]); simple taps ([ɾ]) are also heard.
3. The approximant w has usually no rounding ([β̞]), and sometimes (especially if followed by e or i) some friction [β̝]
4. The glottal fricative /h/ is the most obvious difference between the two main dialects. K-Tiriyó is a dialect without /h/; where H-Tiriyó has an /h/, K-Tiriyó shows a VV sequence (realized as a long vowel). In H-Tiriyó, each h-cluster - hp, ht, hk (historically *[hp], *[ht], *[hk]) - has a different realization: [(h)ɸ], [ht], [(h)h] (i.e., with p and k, [h] is weakly realized and spirantizes the following plosive; with t, [h] is stronger and there is no spirantization). Older H-Tiriyó speakers have a fourth cluster hs [(h)s̠], with a weakly realized [h], while younger H-Tiriyó speakers have [ːs̠] ~ [s̠s̠] (K-Tiriyó speakers have only [ːs̠]); all in all, its status is, however, marginal.
   The examples in the table below illustrate these various realizations:

The basic syllable template is (C₁)V₁(V₂)(C₂) -- i.e., the possible syllable types are:

1. Onsetless syllables (V₁, V₁V₂, V₁C₂, V₁V₂C₂) occur only word-initially; all vowels except ï are possible in this position.
   Ex.: aware 'caiman'; enu 'his/her eye'; ëmë 'you (sg.)'; irakë 'giant ant'; okomo 'wasp'; uru 'bread-like food'.
2. The most frequent syllable type is C₁V₁, in which all vowels and all consonants (except h) are possible.
   Ex.: pakoro 'house', kurija 'gourd', mïnepu 'brige', tëpu 'stone', jako 'friend!', nërë 's/he', wewe 'wood, tree, plant'
3. Vowel sequences (V₁V₂) can be made of identical vowels (V₁ = V₂), in which case they are realized as long vowels. In this case, no coda consonants are possible (i.e., no *(C₁)VVC₂).
   Exs.:aapë 'your arm', eeke 'how?', mëërë 'that one (animate)', piito 'brother-in-law', tïïnë 'quiet', ooto (tree sp.), muunu 'fish bait'.

Tiriyó stress follows a rhythmic pattern of the kind Hayes (1995) calls iambic. Phonetically:

• In (C)V-only words, every second syllable from the beginning of the word is stressed, except the final syllable, which is never stressed (extrametric).
• A non-(C)V syllable anywhere in the word attracts stress (except in the always unstressed final position) and disturbs the pattern, forcing it to restart as if a new word had begun.
• Bisyllabic words do not have obvious stress.

Examples (acute accents mark stress, and colons length):

Note that some words apparently follow the opposite - trochaic - pattern (e.g., /meekane/ above). For these words, an underlying sequence of identical vowels is proposed. Cognate words from related languages provide evidence for this analysis: compare the Tiriyó stem /eeka/ 'bite' with e.g. Waiwai, Katxuyana, Hixkaryana /eska/, Panare /ehka/, Karihona /eseka/, suggesting a historical process of syllable reduction with subsequent compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel.

Since stress depends only on the type and number of syllables, morphological processes that involve syllabic prefixes or suffixes affect stress:

In Hayes' framework, one could argue that stress placement is based on pairs of syllables (feet) consisting of either two (C)V (light) or one non-(C)V (heavy) syllables, except for the last syllable, which is extrametric, i.e. never forms a foot. This would explain the lack of stress in bisyllabic words: an initial light syllable, left alone by the extrametricity of the final syllable, cannot form a foot by itself and remains unstressed.

Reduplication in Tiriyó affects verbs (regularly) and also nouns and adverbials (irregularly: not all of them). On verbs, it usually marks iteration or repetition (e.g.: wïtëe 'I go, I am going', wïtë-wïtëe 'I keep going, I always go, I go again and again'); on nouns and adverbials, several examples of an entity, or several instances of a phenomenon (e.g.: kutuma 'painful', kuu-kuutuma 'painful all over, feeling pain all over one's body'; sikinman '(something) black', siki-sikiman-ton 'a number of black things' (including also the plural marker -ton; see below).

Formally, there are two reduplicative patterns, termed internal and external reduplication. External reduplication is a regular process that copies the first two moras of a complete word (i.e., the first two syllables if they are light, or the first syllable if it is heavy). Coda consonants are not reduplicated: the preceding vowel is copied as long (i.e. as a VV sequence). If a syllable contains two vowels, some (older?) speakers copy both vowels, while other (younger?) speakers copy only the first vowel and lengthen it (i.e. turn it into a VV sequence).

Internal reduplication affects the interior of a word. In most cases, it can be seen as affecting the stem prior to the addition of person- or voice-marking prefixes; in some cases, however, it affects some pre-stem material as well (cf. the table below, in which '+' signs separate affixes from the stem in the first column). In many, but not all, cases, internal reduplication may result from the simplification of external reduplication: impo-imponoosewa > impo-mponoosewa. (Some examples from Carlin 2004 support this hypothesis.)

Finally, some cases are idiosyncratic and probably need to be listed independently (e.g., tëëkae 'bitten', 'bit', tëëkaakae 'bitten all over').

There are two general morphophonological processes that have important effects on the shapes of Tiriyó morphemes: syllable reduction and ablaut.

Syllable reduction is the process whereby the final syllable of certain morphemes (mostly stems, though also sometimes affixes) is changed depending on the shape of the following element. These morphemes will typically have:

• a full or CV grade, in which the final syllable occurs in its full form;
• three reduced grades:
  • a coda or C grade, in which the final syllable is reduced to a coda consonant (n if the syllable had a nasal onset, h otherwise);
    if the reducing syllable is not nasal (NV):
  • a length or VV grade, in which the final syllable is dropped, and the preceding vowel is 'compensatorily lengthened' (becomes VV);
  • a zero grade, in which the final syllable is dropped without any changes on the preceding vowel.

The table below illustrates the various grades of the verb stems pono(pï) 'to tell O' and ona(mï) 'to bury, hide O'.

The reducing syllable can be the final one (pono(pï) 'to tell O', ona(mï) 'to bury/hide O'), or the initial one ((pï)tai 'shoes', mïta 'mouth'). The full form occurs when the following material (affix, stem, clitic) has a consonant cluster, i.e. is CCV-initial (the first consonant resyllabifies as the coda of the reducing syllable), or then starts with r. The reduced forms occur when this is not the case: the coda grade when a possible cluster - mp, nt, nk, ns, hp, hk, ht - results, and the length grade in the other cases (the zero grade for verb stems, when no clitics follow). Reducing syllables generally consist of a stop or nasal and the vowels ï or u (pï, pu, tï, tu..., mï, mu,...); rï and ru syllables can also reduce, but with some irregularities; wï syllables only reduce stem-initially (and apparently never have a coda grade).

Historically, syllable reduction results from the weakening and loss of the high vowels ï and u, leading to the formation of consonant clusters, in which the first element typically 'debuccalizes' to a glottal element (h or ʔ) and later disappears, causing (when possible) the compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel (cf. Gildea 1995). Comparative evidence suggests that many, perhaps all, morpheme-internal clusters in the Cariban family were formed as a result of this process.

In Tiriyó, as in most Cariban languages, there is a class of stems which has two forms in different morphosyntactic environments: a form which is e-initial (the e- or front grade) and a form which is ë-initial (the ë- or back grade). With nouns, for instance, the back grade occurs with the inclusive (1+2) prefix k-, the third-person coreferential ('reflexive') prefix t-, and with the non-possessed form (prefixless); all other person-marked forms have the front grade.

There are two categories of pronouns in Tiriyó: speech act participant pronouns and the third-person pronouns.[3] Pronouns can be subjects of transitive and intransitive sentences, as well as objects.[3] However, pronouns cannot bear possessive morphology. The first-person pronoun, wɨ(ɨ), is unique in that it has a long vowel sound that is only heard if a clitic particle follows; as well, it does not have a derived collective form (instead, kɨmɛnjamo and anja are used).[3] Anja is similar to third person pronouns, but is not affected by any of the semantic features that affect the rest of the third-person pronouns; thus, it is listed separately. Examples to illustrate:

Third person pronouns are affected by features including visibility, proximity, and animacy. In the following example, ‘who’ is considered animate and ‘what’ is considered inanimate:

Tiriyó is the only known Cariban language where almost all interrogatives begin with the letter ‘a’, similar to ‘wh-words’ in English. The only exceptions, ‘eeke’ and ‘eekanmao’ (‘how’ and ‘when’, respectively) come from an earlier ‘aeke’.[3] They are also the only words to be affected by the ‘_hpe’ particle, an indefinite. ‘Akɨ’ and ‘atɨ’ have the same animacy distinction as certain pronouns; ‘Akɨ’ is similar to the English ‘who,’ but is used to ask about any animate being. To illustrate:

Possession in Tiriyó is denoted by the addition of a prefix that expresses the person of the possessor and a suffix that indicates possession to the stem of the noun being possessed. This suffix takes one of three forms: -ri, -hpɛ, or –ø.[3] Nouns in Tiriyó, like in all languages, can be classified according to possessibility. Some nouns may not be possessed, others must always be. These conditions exist along a spectrum, where the majority of nouns are optionally possessible.[3]

Nouns that are never possessed include pronouns, proper nouns, human groups, animal names, and some nominalizations. These nominalizations are: “potential” Agents, Objects, and Subjects; generic infinitives; and adverbial nominalizers.[3] This means that to indicate possession of an animal one must use indirect possession, where the inflection is not applied to the animal name, but to a generic noun.[3]

Nouns that are always possessed include kinship terms, generic nouns, some nominalizations, and some unclassified nouns. The nominalizations are specific infinitives and “actual” Agents and Objects. The unclassified nouns are a small group: arɨ (“leaf, contents”); eperu (“fruit”); epɨ (“tree, plant”); enɨ (“container”); jo(mɨ) (“wrapping”); po (“clothes”).[3]

These groups (non-possessed, possessed) are not the majority. Most nouns in Tiriyó are optionally possessible, but to different degrees. Some nouns are usually possessed, others rarely. For example, body parts are optionally possessible- but in actuality they are almost always possessed. From Meira's 1999 Grammar:[3]

Only in specific contexts like the case above can they appear unpossessed.

Other nouns that are optionally possessible include relational terms, manufactured items, and plant names. Relational terms, like body parts, are almost always possessed, e.g.:[3]

The other groups illuminate other parts of the continuum. Manufactured items are found equally in possessed and non-possessed forms.[3]

Nouns that are usually not possessed include plant names. Similarly to animal names, they may be indirectly possessed by means of a generic noun; however they may also be directly possessed in some cases, for example:[3]

Meira hypothesizes that the continuum of possessibility is structured something as follows:[3]

Tiriyó belongs to the Cariban language family, whose syntax is the least understood out of all its grammatical aspects. The case marking patterns of Tiriyó are no exception to this, as they vary considerably and “almost every possible combination of participants is instantiated in some construction”—the best way to describe the language is thus to say that Tiriyo is a complicated ‘split-participant’ system.[3]

Ergative patterns, where the subject of an intransitive sentence and the object of a transitive sentence are marked in the same way, can be observed in certain cases: namely, in remote past clauses and ‘potential participant’ nominalizations. When the remote past form of a verb is used, the subject of a transitive clause is marked with the postposition _:ja; the subjects of intransitive clauses and objects of transitive sentences are both unmarked.[3] The first example below shows the marking of the transitive subject and the second shows the lack of marking of an intransitive subject:

Nominative patterns are also found throughout the language; notable examples are object-verb order sentences when the transitive subject or object are in third person, negative, supine, and habitual past form phrases. In all the above, the subjects of transitive and intransitive sentences pattern together, while the object of a transitive sentence patterns differently.[3]

According to Sergio Meira, two other forms of case agreement exist in the language. ‘Split-S systems’, where the subjects of intransitive verbs are sometimes marked the same way as the subjects of transitive ones, but sometimes are marked with objects instead, exist. Tripartite constructions, where subjects of transitive sentences, subjects of intransitive sentences, and objects are all marked differently, also exist in Tiriyó. Certain tenses even have more than one pattern at a time; one hypothesis to explain these variations is that the language’s case marking patterns are “fossil remnants of older constructions”.[3] In other words, the different constructions within each pattern are linked because of the history of the language, not because of their meaning.

Verbs in Tiriyó distinguish between factual and non-factual moods. The non-factual mood contains hypotheticals, incredulatives, and admonitives. The factual mood contains past, present, and future events, but does not imply that the speaker is necessarily certain that an event will occur or has occurred.[3] The tenses of Tiriyó, past; present; and future, have both perfect and imperfect forms. Non-past tenses (present and future) distinguish between certainty and doubt on the part of the speaker.

The past perfective (-ne) is used to describe past events but does not convey that the events are necessarily relevant to the present. With an adverb, it carries the meaning of referring to a distant past.[3]

The past imperfective (-(ja)kɛ(ne)), on the other hand, describes an unbounded event in the past, usually a habitual action. It is increasingly rare. Meira found in 1999 that many speakers characterize it as “old people’s language”, and do not believe it is commonly used among younger speakers.[3] Instead, younger speakers express this state with the habitual past.

The present imperfective (-(ja)-e, -(ja)-(nɛ)) is used to express ongoing progressive, habitual, or typical actions, as well as “general truths”. It can also be used to talk about the immediate future, although this is not its most common use.[3]

The present perfective (ø) expresses an action that has been completed very recently, and is still relevant to the present.[3] For example,

Perfect and imperfect in the future are used to distinguish actions that have a limited duration and actions that are not limited. The future imperfect (-ta-e, -ta-(ne)) is the more common form, and is used to express a potential future action that does not have durational limits.[3]

The perfect future tense (-(ja)-kɛ(mɨ)) emphasizes that a future event will only last for a short amount of time, and implies that afterwards another event will take place.[3]

Future perfective is not the only way of representing temporary future events. Speakers of Tiriyó may also use the present imperfective, along with a particle _pitɛ (for a second).[3]

These phrases have the same functional meaning, and both are acceptable; however using the present imperfective with the particle _pitɛ is more common. This construction is potentially replacing the future perfective.[3]

In present and future tenses, Tiriyó distinguish between things the speaker is certain of and things they are not. This distinction, represented as suffixes –e for certainty and –ne or –nɛ for doubt, is not present in collective forms.[3] To use the certain form, a speaker must have absolute confidence in an event. For example, if there are rainclouds in the sky visible to both speaker and addressee and the speaker would like to say that it will rain, they must use the doubt form.[3]

It is important to note that the certainty and doubt forms do not express the source of the information; that is to say, they are not evidentials. They communicate how confident a speaker is in their assessment of a situation.[3]