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A Grammar of Trio

A Cariban Language of Suriname

by Eithne B. Carlin (Author)
©2004 Monographs XXXIV, 554 Pages

Summary

This is a comprehensive descriptive grammar of Trio, a Cariban language, spoken in the remote rainforest of Suriname and along the border in Brazil. Typologically interesting features of Trio include a basic word order Object-Verb-Subject and a system of evidentiality that expresses whether or not the speaker was eye-witness to an event. Trio has several grammatical morphemes that mirror the group’s conceptualization of the world of the visible and the invisible in which they live; one is a facsimile marker that expresses that the denotee of a noun is manifestly but not intrinsically that denotee; the role of the individual in contributing to a harmonious collective, recognized by anthropologists as a salient aspect of Amazonian life, is expressed by two «responsibility» clitics. This grammar will be a valuable source-book for linguists, anthropologists, and everyone interested in the finer points of Guianan-Amazonian languages.

Details

Pages
XXXIV, 554
Publication Year
2004
ISBN (Hardcover)
9783631529003
Language
English
Keywords
Trio-Sprache Grammatik Suriname North Amazonia Cognitive grammar Linguistics Word structure Native America Anthropolical linguistics
Published
Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2004. XXXIV, 554 pp., num. fig. and tables

Biographical notes

Eithne B. Carlin (Author)

The Author: Eithne B. Carlin, born in Northern Ireland, studied Irish, German, and Linguistics in Trinity College Dublin, and German Language and Literature at several German universities. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Cologne in 1992 with a thesis on So, a moribund language of Uganda. She has been doing research on the Amerindian languages of the Guianas since 1996 and co-edited the Atlas of the Languages of Suriname (2002). Since 2003 the author has been documenting the moribund Arawakan language Mawayana. She currently works as lecturer in the department of Languages and Cultures of Native America at Leiden University.

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Title: A Grammar of Trio