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- Title
Language classification in Western Amazonia: Advances in favor of the Pano-Takana hypothesis.
- Authors
Valenzuela, Pilar M.; Zariquiey, Roberto
- Abstract
The languages of the Pano and Takana families exhibit a considerable number of lexical and structural affinities that cannot be ascribed to mere chance and are not readily detectable instances of borrowing. After the comparative studies by Key (1968) and Girard (1971) the proposal of a genetic relationship between these two families was generally accepted (e.g., Loos 1973, 2005; Suárez 1973; Kaufman 1990; Campbell 1997). Without providing further sound evidence, however, this classification was later put into question (Fabre 1998; Loos 1999; Fleck 2013) and, even today, there is no full consensus as to whether the observed similarities are due to genetic inheritance or long-term language contact. The present paper offers lexical and grammatical evidence in support of the hypothesis that Pano and Takana are genetically connected. Comparing what can be considered Proto-Pano and Proto-Takana reconstructions, it is shown that 18 of the 40 items in the basic vocabulary list proposed by the Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) (Holman et al. 2008) may be cognate; this includes 9 body-part terms, which are often considered as "basic" lexicon. Also, a set of alleged grammatical cognates are assembled, and shared constructions involving motion verbal morphology, intransitive and transitive auxiliaries, transitivity harmony restrictions, and switch-reference are discussed. Interestingly, various of these shared grammatical features are cross-linguistically uncommon.
- Subjects
VOCABULARY; HEREDITY; LANGUAGE contact; CLASSIFICATION; LANGUAGE &; languages; SIMILARITY (Psychology)
- Publication
LIAMES: Línguas Indígenas Americanas, 2023, Vol 23, p1
- ISSN
1678-0531
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.20396/liames.v23i00.8670150