Morfossintaxe Tenetehára (Tupí-Guaraní)

Abstract

This thesis aims to present a theoretical and descriptive analysis ofmorphosyntactic phenomena of the Tenetehára language. First, I will showthat verbal transitive structures can present the direct object incorporated inthe verbal root. At the end of this process, a syntactic configuration isformed whose nature is equivalent to an intransitive intransitive structure,since the head of the object moves to the verbal root head position from aargumental position. However, in the possessors raising structures, onlypart of the object moves, namely: the NP possessed is incorporated into thevP head. The result of this process does not change the initial transitivestructure. That is to say, in the constructions of possessor raising, there is nodecrease of valence, although there is incorporation. Another objective ofthis work is to show that the Tenetehára language presents two causativemorphemes, namely: (i) the morpheme {mu-}, which causativize unergativeand unaccusative verbs, introducing a direct causation; and (ii) themorpheme {-kar}, whose function is to causativize transitive verbs,introducing a indirect causation, in terms of Camargos (2013). In addition tothese morphemes, I will also examine the grammatical nature of themorpheme {ze-}, which is responsible for the reflexive, reciprocal, and anticausativevoices. In addition, I will analyze the morphosyntactic andsemantic properties of the competition of the prefix {ze-} with the causativemorphemes {mu-} and {-kar}. Faced with this, I investigate how theanaphoric resumption mechanism; I analyze the linear order in which theseaffixes occur, I verify in what way a semantics of the dynamics of theperceivable forces in the event is sensitive to pertinent derivations and,finally, I examine what argument is the dynamics of the impact of forces onthe event in an unaccusative/descriptive verb, for example. Another purposeof this thesis is an analysis of the suffix {-har} in Tenetehára. What isobserved is that this affix, besides creating agentive nominalizations, canderive circumstantial nominalizations. Therefore, I established a correlationof the nominalizer (-har) observed in the Tenetehára language with the samenominalizer registered in three other languages of the Tupí-Guaraní family,namely: the Xingu Asurini, the Kamaiurá and the Parakanã. From acomparative analysis, they show that in these languages they are morphemenominalizer of agent and another of nominalizer of circumstance. As acorollary of this intuition, one can assume that in Tenetehára, the morpheme{-har} covers two functions which in other Tupí-Guaraní languages arecodified by two distinct nominalizing suffixes. Another grammaticalphenomenon analyzed in this work refers to the derivation of postpositionalphrases in Tenetehára. Regarding the classification of the postpositions, Ipropose that the additions in Tenetehára can be classified in lexical,functional and hybrid. In addition, I investigate how, in antipassives and indirect causative structures, the postpositions ehe in and pe by can begrouped according to this classification. My proposal is that suchpostpositions are hybrid in these contexts, but in others they may be bothlexical and functional. Finally, I will show that transitive verbs, when giventhe antipassive morpheme (puru-), have grammatical properties that aretypical of antipassive constructs. This is because they start to display crosslinguisticproperties of this type of construction.