Ideophone Integration and Expressiveness in Wao Terero

Ideophones, which “simulate an event, an emotion, a perception through language,” have been claimed to be a universal category (Voeltz & Kilian-Hatz 2001:3); however, they are generally understudied and are often considered marginal to the linguistic system. Focusing on their markedness, studies of ideophones often ignore how ideophones participate in the larger grammar of a language. Recognizing the often marked, expressive nature of ideophones in comparison with other word classes in a language, while also accounting for the fact that they can operate within the larger grammatical structure of that language, Dingemanse’s (2017) integration-expressiveness continuum bridges this gap. This model illuminates the place of ideophones in Wao Terero, a language isolate spoken in the Amazonian region of Ecuador: how the word class is treated, with specific reference to morphosyntactic integration and expressiveness. Wao Terero exhibits ideophones that constitute their own intonation unit, are reduplicated, occur at a clause boundary, modify verbs, co-occur with light verbs such as ‘do’ or ‘say’, co-occur with verbs that are seemingly synonymous with the ideophone creating complex predicates, and take verbal morphology. These different types of constructions in which ideophones can occur show how they participate in the larger grammatical structure of Wao Terero—namely that they can span the integration-expressiveness continuum with instances of ideophones that are syntactically free, highly morphosyntactically integrated, and everywhere in between. While the continuum implies a proportional inverse relationship between integration and expressiveness, the scalar nature of the prosodic features—such as length, pitch, intensity, and voice quality—that contribute to an ideophone’s expressiveness leads to complications in the application of the continuum to all Wao Terero data. Despite the individual examples that challenge its validity, the continuum appears to account for the majority of the Wao Terero data analyzed. Furthermore, beyond explaining the nature of the data synchronically, the continuum is also shown to be useful in terms of diachrony by exploring probable grammaticalization pathways

Direction and Associated Motion in Tibeto-Burman

This study analyzes systems of direction and associated motion in 23 languages of the Tibeto-Burman family. Both direction and associated motion can be encoded by a range of grammatical strategies, including affixes, clitics, parti- cles, serial-verb constructions, and auxiliary verbs. While some languages have only associated motion or direction, others have both, either via distinct sub- systems, syntactic ambiguity, or context-dependent interpretation. While direc- tional encodings can be interpreted as associated motion in some contexts, the reverse can also be true. Verbal semantics is key to the pragmatic interpretation of examples in context; some types of motion verbs are more compatible with directional interpretations and others with associated motion. In addition, certain types of motion verbs were found to be compatible with different temporal re- lationships that hold between the activity of the primary verb and the motional component. Finally, the grammatical role of the figure in such constructions de- pends on both the temporal relationship and the semantics of the verb

Documenting Language, Culture, and Cognition: Language and Space among the Waorani

This paper looks to investigate the intersection between the disciplines of anthropology,\ud linguistics, and cognitive science through the discussion of documentation projects and\ud documenting spatial language. In focusing on the language and culture of the Waorani, an\ud indigenous group of the Amazonian region of Ecuador, this paper examines the properties of the\ud language's static locative constructions, the language's status as an isolate, and the challenges\ud and successes in the documentation process at present. This study also addresses these topics'\ud relation with the study of the intersection of space, language, and cognition by looking at some\ud of the responses given by native speakers to the prompts in Bowerman and Pederson's (1992)\ud "Topological Relations Picture Series," a set of line drawings that depict simple scenes such as\ud an apple in a bowl. These speakers' responses, as examples of spatial language use, offer what\ud Stephen Levinson (1996:356) calls "more than just a privileged access to [cognition]," which is\ud "the intermediate variable that promises to explain cultural propensities in spatial behavior." This\ud paper supports Levinson's claim that language, culture, and cognition are intimately linked and\ud can be studied through spatial language expressions across cultures. Therefore, any conclusions\ud drawn in this paper may bring the studies of anthropology, linguistics, and cognition closer to\ud finding common ground and possibly contribute to the understanding of human behavior.\ud Because of this, I argue that spatial language expressions are amongst the most important to elicit\ud when doing documentation projects