The Chipaya subject clitics: a pragmatic approach

(DFG, 2017-2019)

The project is concerned with the pragmatic and syntactic distribution of the Chipaya subject clitics. Chipaya is a language isolate of western Bolivian, spoken only by approximately 1,800 speakers. The Chipaya subject clitics are special clitics and not obligatory. Chipaya has two types of clitic constructions: (1) clitic doubling in which the subject clitic occurs with a co-referential subject noun or pronoun; (2) single clitics without a co-referential subject noun or pronoun. I distinguish between lexical and anaphoric doubling (Belloro 2007: 117): in lexical doubling, the doubled subject is represented by a lexical noun phrase, while in anaphoric doubling, the subject occurs in form of a pronoun. Clitic doubling with first and second person subject referents is anaphoric, as these are speech act participants and as such are always referred to by a pronoun. Non-speech act participants—that is, third person subject referents—are expressed by either a noun or a pronoun. Thus, in dealing with third person subject referents, one has to distinguish between lexical and anaphoric doubling. I hypothesise that the pragmatic distribution of the Chipaya subject clitics relates to the degree of activation and identifiability of the subject referent. With respect to the syntactic distribution, the applicant suggests that the Chipaya subject clitics follow the negation particle in negative clauses. In non-negative clauses, the subject clitics of a first and second person attach to the object argument as a default, while the subject clitics of a third person follow the subject argument. The pragmatic distribution is investigated with reference to the terms of “activation” and “identifiability” (Lambrecht 1994: 74–116), employing the factor of “[r]eferential distance” (Givón 1983: 13–14). Brand-new, unidentifiable subject referents will additionally be examined with respect to definiteness and specificity. The investigation of the syntactic distribution considers the clitic construction itself, the host of the subject clitics and the sentence type. It is hypothesised that the potential focus-lending ability of the Chipaya subject clitics rules, or at least influences their syntactic distribution.

Contact: Dr. Katja Hannß