Matter, Florian (2021). Diachronic and typological aspects of Cariban verbal argument marking. (Thesis). Universität Bern, Bern
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Abstract
This dissertation presents a multi-faceted investigation of argument marking in the Cariban language family, combining a comprehensive descriptive survey with a series of targeted historical-comparative and typological analyses. The work addresses the heterogeneity of existing grammatical descriptions by first establishing a new empirical baseline: coherent, etymologically and crosslinguistically informed sketches of the verbal argument marking systems of seventeen individual languages. Building on this foundation, the thesis challenges and refines previous scholarship on the family’s classification and morphosyntactic structure. It is argued that existing classifications, particularly the postulation of a Guianan branch, are not adequately supported by shared innovations. A more rake-like phylogeny is proposed, supported by the results of a quantitative phylogenetic study incorporating both lexical and morphological data. The study also re-evaluates morphosyntactic alignment, demonstrating that patterns of person marking are conditioned by a complex interplay of verb class, person, and the nature of the co-argument, revealing systems far more intricate than a simple “hierarchical alignment” model would suggest. Several key claims are advanced regarding the historical development of the family. A flat SAP > 3 person hierarchy is reconstructed for Proto-Cariban, and it is argued that no Cariban language exhibits morphological direction marking or a true “inversion” system; local innovations, such as portmanteau forms, are shown to be asymmetric, occurring only in 1>2 scenarios. The dissertation provides an in-depth investigation of a reconstructed linking prefix *j-, which signaled the adjacency of a dependent noun. Its evolution accounts for various synchronic phenomena, including its partial loss in the Pemongan group and a shared innovation in Panare and Pemongan involving the complementary distribution of third-person markers and lexical nouns in imperatives. Finally, the thesis analyzes a special class of transitive verbs that historically took a *t(ɨ)- prefix. Evidence from the lack of umlaut with preverbal objects in languages like Trió and the presence of a w- prefix on a subset of these verbs in Arara supports the novel claim that this verb class did not combine with the *j- linker, but with a distinct *w- linker. An extensive digital companion piece housing the data and supplementary materials for the research done in the course of writing this thesis is also provided at cariban.clld.org.
| Item Type: | Thesis |
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| Dissertation Type: | Single |
| Date of Defense: | 26 February 2021 |
| Subjects: | 400 Language > 410 Linguistics 400 Language > 490 Other languages |
| Institute / Center: | 06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies > Institute of Linguistics |
| Depositing User: | Hammer Igor |
| Date Deposited: | 13 Jan 2026 17:14 |
| Last Modified: | 13 Jan 2026 23:25 |
| URI: | https://boristheses.unibe.ch/id/eprint/7050 |
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