In this chapter, I first discuss the organisation of the Tariana grammar and lexicon from an etymological viewpoint (§26.1). Then, in §26.2, I consider a number of semantic issues which are relevant to the organisation of grammar. The last section, §26.3, discusses some issues in the lexical semantics of Tariana.

Tariana grammar and lexicon: an etymological perspective

Arawak grammar and lexicon in Tariana

Like many other Arawak languages, Tariana preserves the following categories (Aikhenvald 1999b):

1. •cross-referencing (Chapter 6) and pronominal genders (Chapter 5);

2. •the number markers -ne, for humans and animates (from Proto-Arawak *-na/-ni), and -pe, for nouns of other groups (from Proto-Arawak *-pe) (see Chapter 8); and

3. •the common Arawak markers of attribution ka- and negation ma-.

There are just a few traces of possessive markers: -si ‘marker of non-possessed nouns’ (from Proto-Arawak *-tʃi); and the markers of possessed forms of alienably possessed nouns' -ni (from *-ne/-ni), -ɾe (from *-ɾe) and -na (from *-na) (see §6.4). Tariana preserves a common Arawak irregularity in the alternation between the unpossessed and possessed forms of the reflex of the Proto-Arawak pana/pani ‘house’ (see §6.4.4). (For an outline of Proto-Arawak grammar and lexicon see Aikhenvald forthcoming-d and 1999a, and Payne 1991.) Cognates in other grammatical categories – such as valency changing derivations, classifiers, case-markers and markers for other verbal categories -are problematic.

Most terms for body parts have cognates in other Arawak languages and can be reconstructed for Proto-Arawak (see Payne 1991), e.g.