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.
| ISBN: | 9783631529003 |
| Publication date: | 10th August 2004 |
| Author: | Eithne B Carlin |
| Publisher: | Peter Lang Edition an imprint of Lang, Peter, GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wiss |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 549 pages |
| Series: | Duisburger Arbeiten Zur Sprach- Und Kulturwissenschaft : Duisburg Papers on Research in Language and Culture |
| Genres: |
Grammar, syntax and morphology Society and culture: general |