Asymmetries between finiteness categories in the Tuparí language (Tupí family): clause type, tense, evidentiality

This paper examines the three grammatical categories which jointly mark finite clauses in Tuparí: clause type, tense, and evidentiality. I discuss the asymmetries which obtain between these three categories, focusing especially on the ways that evidentiality interacts with the other two. I show that...

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Bibliographic Details
Author: Singerman, Adam
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2025
Country:Brasil
Institution:Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)
Repository:Cadernos de Estudos Linguísticos
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:ojs.periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br:article/8677446
Online Access:https://periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br/ojs/index.php/cel/article/view/8677446
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Tupi
Evidentialiy
Clause type
Tense
Evidência
Tipo de cláusula
Tenso
Tupí
Evidencialmente
Description
Summary:This paper examines the three grammatical categories which jointly mark finite clauses in Tuparí: clause type, tense, and evidentiality. I discuss the asymmetries which obtain between these three categories, focusing especially on the ways that evidentiality interacts with the other two. I show that the selection of clause type (syntactically, the highest of the three categories within the Tuparí clause) asymmetrically impacts the specification of the evidential contrast as [+WITNESSED] or [–WITNESSED]. I further show that tense and evidentiality impact one another: only past tense clauses can mark the witnessed/non-witnessed evidential contrast, and [–WITNESSED] clauses cannot use the full range of past tense morphology that is available in [+WITNESSED] ones. The paper concludes with a pair of figures which visualize these complex dependencies.