Abstract

CALIFA, Martín  and  BELLORO, Valeria A.. DISCOURSE MOTIVATIONS FOR INTRANSITIVE SUBJECT POSITION IN MOCOVI AND TOBA (GUAYKURUAN, ARGENTINA). Lingüística [online]. 2020, vol.36, n.1, pp.102-125.  Epub June 01, 2020. ISSN 2079-312X.  https://doi.org/10.5935/2079-312x.20200006.

The aim of this paper is to examine the position of intransitive subjects in Mocovi and Toba (Guaykuruan, Argentina) from the perspective of the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface. To that end a text corpus from both languages is analyzed looking at the animacy, informational status, and cognitive accessibility of the referents coded as subject. The general results show that in both languages the preverbal position features a restriction favoring animate, given, and high accessibility referents, and disfavoring inanimate, new, and low accessibility ones, which coupled with its low textual frequency suggests this is the marked word order.

The postverbal position, in contrast, does not show those restrictions, which along with its greater frequency suggests this is the unmarked order. Lastly, closer inspection reveals that both languages exhibit idiosyncrasies, with the semantic motivation as more influential in Mocovi, and the pragmatic motivation with a dominant role in Toba.

Keywords : word order; Semantics; Pragmatics; Mocovi; Toba.

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