LINGUIST List 13.1362

Wed May 15 2002

Diss: Lang Description: Seifart "El sistema..."

Editor for this issue: Karolina Owczarzak <karolinalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Frank.Seifart, Lang Description: Seifart "El sistema de clasificacion..."

New Dissertation Abstract

Institution: Universidad de los Andes
Program: Magister en Etnolinguistica
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2000

Author: Frank Seifart 

Dissertation Title: 
El sistema de clasificacion nominal del Mirana

Linguistic Field: Language Description

Dissertation Director: Jon Landaburu


Dissertation Abstract: 

This work presents some interesting features of the grammar of the
Mirana language, spoken along the Caqueta river, in the department of
Amazonas in Colombia. Mirana morphology is agglutinating and there is
a richness of derivational and inflectional processes. Mirana has a
complex tonal system which manifests itself at various levels of
linguistic structure. The most distinctive feature of Mirana grammar -
and the major topic of this work - is its system of nominal
classification. A large and heterogeneous set of class markers is used
to derive nouns and to mark agreement in a variety of morphosyntactic
contexts. There is a pervasive variation between the use of two types
of class markers: general class markers and specific class markers. It
will be argued that the system is in a process of splitting into two
systems which correspond to the two types of class markers. It will be
shown that the type of system of nominal classification of Mirana -
and those of other Amazonian languages - has not been sufficiently
taken into account by general typologies of nominal classification so
far.