draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

These phonological processes have guided our transliteration of the Jesuit texts, as in some cases
the underlying form of a personal pronoun is not obvious due to processes of vowel coalescence and
deletion reflected in the original orthography.
2.2.2 Nominal Morphology
Nominal morphology in both Old Omagua and the modern language, with the exception of one
endocentric nominalizer, consists exclusively of clitics. We analyze the Omagua noun phrase as
consisting of a number of morphologically fixed positions, occupied by functionally distinct clitics.
One prenominal position is filled by pronominal proclitics that encode the person and number of a
possessor (§2.2.1). A series of postnominal positions may be occupied by an endocentric nominalizer
(§2.2.3.2.4), augmentative or diminutive marker (§2.2.2.2), a nominal past tense marker (§2.2.2.3),
plural markers (§2.2.2.1), oblique-licensing postpositions (§2.3.3) and an intensifier =katu, as is
illustrated in Table 2.5. 23
Table 2.5: Modern Omagua Noun Phrase Structure
poss= noun -nomz =aug/dim =tense =num =obl =intsf
2.2.2.1 Number
Plural number for NPs is expressed by the NP enclitic =kana pl.ms, as in (2.1).
(2.1) k w aRaSi, yas1, sesukana, w1Rakana, 1watakana weRanu, to maRitipa aikiaRakana Dios muRa?
k w aRaSi yas1 sesu =kana
sun moon star =pl.ms
aikiaRa
dem.prox.ms.pro
=kana
=pl.ms
w1Ra =kana
bird =pl.ms
Dios muRa
God 3sg.ms
1wata =kana weRanu to maRi =tipa
forest =pl.ms coord ? what =interr
‘The sun, the moon, the stars, the birds and the forests, which of these is God?’
(example (5.6a))
In modern Omagua, plural marking is optional when numerals occur in the noun phrase. In the
ecclesiastical texts, however, plural marking, with one exception, is found even when numerals are
present, as in (2.2). 24
(2.2) aikiaRa musap1R1ka personakanasui, maniamaitipa awa uwaka 1m1nua?
aikiaRa
dem.prox.ms
1m1nua
long.ago
musap1R1ka
three
persona
person
=kana =sui maniamai =tipa awa uwaka
=pl.ms =abl which =interr man transform
23 poss = possessor; nomz = nominalizer; aug = augmentative; dim = diminutive; num = number; obl = oblique
(i.e., oblique-licensing postposition); intsf = intensifier.
24 The exception involves plural marking on the Spanish loan word Dios ‘God’.
10