Sandra Cronhamn will defend her PhD thesis in General Linguistics A grammar of Baniwa classifiers

Faculty Opponent: Associate Professor Katharina Haude, CNRS

Examining Committee: Professor Birgit Hellwig, University of Cologne; Professor Antoine Guillaume, CNRS & Université Lumière Lyon 2; Assistant Professor Ditte Boeg Thomsen, University of Copenhagen

Abstract

Nominal classification systems provide a unique window into the intersection of grammar, semantics, and cognition. Found in more than half of the world’s languages, these systems possess both universal and language-specific properties. Nominal classification systems of a specific type, featuring classifiers marked in multiple morphosyntactic loci, are found in many languages in Northwestern Amazonia. These systems are of particular typological interest as they share properties with several other types of nominal classification systems, yet few of them have been described in detail. A classifier system of this type is found in the Arawakan language Baniwa, spoken by a few thousand people in Northwestern Brazil.

This thesis provides a detailed analysis of the Baniwa classifier system from phonological, morphological, syntactic, functional, semantic, typological, historical and contact perspectives, based on first-hand data from field work and a combination of descriptive and experimental approaches. The analysis outlines a flexible and versatile system encoding semantic distinctions of animacy, shape, and part–whole relations. Classifiers have several central functions in the grammar of Baniwa, including derivation, inflection, and referent tracking in discourse. The system has developed over the course of several millennia, and continues to develop in the face of ongoing cultural change and language contact. It shares many of its properties with classifier systems in other Arawakan languages, as well as with classifier systems in unrelated languages in the area.

This account of Baniwa classifiers contributes to the understanding of nominal classification systems more widely, in particular those of Arawakan and Northwestern Amazonian languages, and illuminates the structure, development and maintenance of such systems. The analysis sheds light on a number of commonly posited dichotomies in linguistic theory, such as the distinction between lexical and grammatical forms, and between inflectional and derivational processes. It is also a contribution to our knowledge of lesser-known languages.