Speaker: Bernat Bardagil-Mas (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen/UC Berkeley)
Title: Multiple exponence and patchwork paradigms
Date: Thursday 1 March
Venue: Van Wijkplaats 2/002
Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs
Abstract
This talk discusses participant cross-reference in Panará, a Northern Jê language spoken in central Brazil. Previous work on the language (Dourado 2001, 2003) concluded that Panará presents a partial alignment split in the exponence of case. While DPs (both pronominal and lexical) are case-marked in an accusative pattern, the pronominal clitic system works in an alignment split: in realis mood, clitics mirror the case exponed on DPs, but in irrealis mood a different accusative alignment system emerges with the irruption of a different nominative clitic paradigm.
After introducing the existing narrative and comparing the Panará case with the existing claims for other Jê languages, I will challenge the two basic claims in the existing view of Panará alignment: there is no clitic nominative paradigm, and there is no clitic alignment split. I will argue that the illusion of a nominative clitic paradigm results from one of the instances of multiple exponence (Campbell 2012) in the Panará participant cross-reference system, and from a shift in the person features targeted by person exponence in irrealis mood.