Body parts and possessive constructions in Mataguayan languages

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter argues for the existence of an early possessive classifier *t(V)- that may have distinguished body parts from the rest of the inalienable nouns in the ase a language family. Evidence of this is the documentation of a t(V)-form or a t(V)-form series in the possessive flexional paradigms in this family. In most cases, it is synchronically reanalyzed as part of the possessive prefix fused to the pronominal possessive prefixes, while in others, *t(V)- seems to have been fused to the root. This suggests that, in Proto-Mataguayan, there may have been only one pronominal series-indexing possessor, and that *t(V)- was related to the meaning of the root. We also posit that there is a relationship with a formally similar verbal prefix, which classifies agentive intransitive roots, and a presumable semantic extension of *t(V)- from body-part nouns to agency in intransitive predicates.