Plant and animal body-part terms in Shiwulu grammar

Abstract

AbstractThe chapter offers an account of the principal constructions involving body-part terms in Shiwilu (aka Jebero), a critically endangered polysynthetic language from the Peruvian Amazon and one of the two members that make up the Kawapanan family. First, Shiwilu features a set of over twenty classifiers. These are, typically, monosyllabic bound roots that appear in a remarkable number of morphosyntactic environments (Valenzuela 2016a, 2019). There are very close formal and semantic resemblances between inanimate classifiers and independent nouns designating parts of plants and animals; hence, the diachronic relationship between them is explored. Second, it is argued that three classifiers whose meanings are associated with ‘tree trunk’, ‘skin/bark’, and ‘body’ have developed into instrumental, habitual-agent, and resultative nominalizers, respectively. This constitutes a diachronic change from grammatical morphemes to even more strongly grammaticalized ones. Third, classifiers and certain nouns, especially those that denote body parts, may incorporate into the verb mainly to create new vocabulary for nameworthy concepts or to manipulate the flow of information in discourse (Mithun 1984, 1986, 1994). Various types of compounded verbs are analyzed, including some conveying physiological states, customary activities or states, and emotions; the latter can involve the internal organ noun kankan ‘liver’. Some discourse consequences of noun/classifier incorporation are also examined. Finally, it is shown that incorporated items can refer not only to the clausal O and S, but also to the A. This characteristic is very rarely attested in the world’s languages.