Comparative analysis of adverbial subordinate clauses as evidence for the western-eastern hypothesis inside the Tupian family

• Grant number: 21/10031-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: April 01, 2022
• End date: September 10, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Luciana Raccanello Storto
• Grantee: Lara Focesi Wolski
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to examine the hypothesis that there are two branches (Eastern and Western) in the Tupian family, taking into account adverbial clauses data from languages of the putative Western and Eastern branches. Rodrigues (2007) shows evidence of phonological and lexical reconstruction for this hypothesis. Nevertheless, there is no syntactic evidence discussed in the literature about reconstruction. The analysis of subordination data carried out in the future work covers the following languages and families: Mekens, Tupari, Wayoro (TP=Tupari), Gavião e Suruí (MO=Mondé), Karo (RA=Ramarama) e Karitiana (AK=Arikém), Satere-Mawé (MW= Mawé), Munduruku (MU=Munduruku), Juruna e Xipaya, (JU= Juruna) e Awetí (AW=Awetí). By analysing the subordination, the auxiliaries, the evidentials, and the focus morphemes of these languages, we will be able to observe whether they have many characteristics in common or not. As a result of a previous preliminary study, we observed that there must be a change in the Western branch of the Tupi family. This research will also be important to verify how the linguistic phenomena - mainly the syntactic ones - present in the adverbial clauses contribute to verify the genetic proximity or distance of these languages and to verify if there are influences of contact between them.