The argument structure of Juruna (Yudja): from verb formation to syntactic strcuture analysis

Author(s)

Suzi Oliveira de Lima

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2008-03-28

Examining board members

Luciana Raccanello Storto; Bruna Franchetto; Esmeralda Vailati Negrao

• Advisor: Luciana Raccanello Storto

Abstract

This dissertation describes and analyzes Juruna (Yudja) verbs based on argument structure and its syntactic consequences. We aim to offer to the Juruna School useful material about verb classes and also to contribute to the advancement of language studies in the generativist framework. The dissertation is divided in two parts - description and analysis). The first is a description of 302 verbs in this language. In this part, we divided verbs in eighteen classes based on morphological, syntactic and semantic criteria established from phenomena present in Juruna. These phenomena are: verb reduplication, semantic properties of roots and affixes, causativization and properties of roots that, associated to verbalizers, form verbs. We presented constructions and morphological operations that each verb described realize, for instance: valence alternation (by affixation or labile alternation), reduplication and suppletion and their functions in this language. The second part of the dissertation - entitled \"analysis\" - presents a generativist account of some Juruna facts described in the first part. To discuss verb formation we based ourselves on Hale & Keyser\'s (1993; 2001) proposal that verbs are formed from two basic structures (monadic and dyadic) with verbal nuclei (V1 and V2) organized structurally and hierarchically. These structures are utilized parametrically, taking into consideration verbal root restrictions and syntactic and semantic traces. Supported by this theorical proposal, we argued that verbs in Juruna are formed structurally based on restrictions of their root. These restrictions will also determine the process of attribution and change of valence and voice and the processes of verb duplication and suppletion in the language. After the analysis of verb formation, we present a hypothesis of sentence structure in Juruna based on the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995; 1998; 1999). In this section we discussed: 1) subject insertion (taking into consideration pronominal forms, demonstratives and nominal phrases) in vP; 2) agreement processes; 3) the insertion of mood realis/ irrealis; 4) sentential order; 5) adverbial adjunction and 6) the parallelism between nominal and verbal domains based on cumulativity and quantification. The central theoretical point of this dissertation is to argue in favor of the idea that syntactic properties may be explained, in large part, as a consequence of verb formation. In this sense, to understand the syntactic structure of a language it is essential to understand the argument structure of its verbs. (AU)