draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

pronouns: free pronouns are shown to the left of the slash, proclitics are shown to the right;
parenthetical vowels are deleted in fast speech when they co-occur with vowel-initial roots.
Table 2.2: Modern Omagua Free Pronouns and Pronominal Proclitics
singular
plural
masc. speech fem. speech masc. speech fem. speech
1 taa / t(a)= tsII / ts(I)= taná / tan(a)= tsIná / tsIn(a)=
1incl
yini / yin(i)=
2 InI / n(I)= IpI / p(I)=
3 muRa / R(a)= ãi / i= ∼ R= Raná / Ran(a)= iná / in(a)=
In the 1sg, free pronoun and pronominal proclitic are distinguished by vowel quantity. This
alternation in quantity is the result of a broader bimoraic minimum word requirement that applies
to nouns. 20 In the 1pl and 3pl, free pronouns and proclitics are distinguished via stress placement,
where the former receive a final stress that is otherwise atypical within Omagua prosody. In the
2sg, 2pl and 3sg the distinction is a segmental one. In the 1incl, neither length, stress or form
distinguish the free pronoun from proclitic; such distinctions may only be made based on whether
yini(=) forms a prosodic word with its host, that is, whether it is assigned its own stress or falls
within the domain of stress assignment of the verbal stem. Two alternants are attested for the
third-person feminine-speech proclitic: i= and R=. The former occurs with consonant-initial roots,
the latter with vowel-initial roots.
Since that the Jesuit texts are written entirely in the masculine genderlect, there are no attestations
of feminine genderlect pronouns in them. However, given that the genderlect system is
also found in modern Kokama and hence, we assume, reconstructable to Proto-Omagua-Kokama,
we infer that the genderlect system was present in Old Omagua. Old Omagua does not appear
to distinguish via stress placement the pronominal and proclitic forms of the 1pl.excl and 3pl
as the modern language does; only penultimate stress is attested on these forms. Relatedly, the
Lord’s Prayer text exhibits a 1pl.excl.ms tanu, as opposed to modern tana. These differences are
intriguing, as u-final 1pl.excl and 3pl forms with no stress alternation are reported in synchronic
descriptions of Kokama-Kokamilla (Faust (1972:17); Vallejos Yopán (2010a:200-214)), and are reconstructed
for Proto-Omagua-Kokama. However, an in-depth discussion of the history of Omagua
and Kokama-Kokamilla pronouns is outside the scope of this work. The forms attested in the Jesuit
texts are given in Table 2.3.
sensitive to both the gender of the speaker and of the referent; in the plural they are sensitive only to the gender
of the speaker (Dobson 1988:28). A similar system is found in Awetí (Tupí), where 1sg, 3sg and 3pl independent
pronouns are sensitive to the gender of the speaker (Drude 2002:179). In Tupinambá (Tupí-Guaraní), modal
particles have been reported to exhibit genderlect differences (Lemos Barbosa 1956:374-375), although independent
pronouns and person cross-referencing prefixes do not.
20 Evidence from the interaction of nouns and nominal number marking indicates that two vowels (as opposed a single
long vowel) are present underlyingly, given which we represent these forms orthographically with two vowels (e.g.,
kuu [ku:] ‘swidden’ verus kuuna [ku"una] ‘swiddens.fs’). Note that the morphosyntactic environment necessary to
prove this underlying structure is not available for pronouns, but given that we assume the surface length of free
pronouns to be motivated by the same phonological constraint, we represent them in the same manner as nouns.
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