Cavineña, or, (almost) Everything is an Enclitic
A look at some features of the indigenous Cavineña language through the lens of its extensive clitic system
Cavineña is an ergative Tacana language spoken in the Bolivian part of the Amazon. Notable for its large number of enclitics and strict rules concerning prosodic wordhood, it also displays rules for cliticizing roots to usually independent modifiers, and gramatically seperate sets of free and bound (enclitic) pronouns. This talk aims to be an introduction to its various types of clitics and cliticization.
Cavineña exhibits several sets of enclitics, including postpositions/case markers, several types of particles, subclause markers, and a set of enclitic pronouns that behave differently from their independent counterparts. Their tendency to loose markers has even made earlier grammars question Cavineña's state as a (morphologically) fully ergative language (Guillaume 2006).
On top of always-enclitic portion of the vocabulary come phonological processes eliminating monosyllabic words: Monosyllabic roots without any affixes are forced to take dummy suffixes or become pro- and enclitics, depending on context (Guillaume 2008).
Guillaume, Antoine (2006). „Revisiting “Split Ergativity” in Cavineña“. In: International Journal of American Linguistics 72:2. S. 159–192. DOI: 10.1086/507164
Guillaume, Antoine (2008). A Grammar of Cavineña. Berlin und New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN: 978-3-11-018842-4
