A descriptive grammar of Desano

Description

Several of the Tukanoan languages in the upper Amazon are highly endangered. This dissertation provides a linguistic description and analysis of Desano, an endangered Tukanoan language of the Vaupés region of Brazil. Much valuable knowledge would be lost if this language were to become extinct without documentation. The Eastern Tukanoan people are famous for their linguistic exogamy and ‘obligatory’ multilingualism; there are some 20 languages in the region whose speakers must marry someone who speaks a different language. There are a number of linguistic traits in Desano, that is described in this dissertation which are of particular interest to linguists in general, since they are rare in the world's languages and stand to contribute much to our understanding of the full range of possibilities in human grammar (and consequently also of some of the limits of human cognition). These include: nasal harmony (in phonology), noun classifier system (in morphology), evidential system (in the interface of morphology-syntax-semantics), etc.The dissertation begins with an introduction of the Desano people and their language; including sociolinguistic information and some historical background. The second chapter presents a phonological description. It then proceeds with a description of the parts of speech in Desano and the characterization of the ‘word’ in Desano, in chapter 3. The buck of the dissertation is devoted to the morphosyntax of Desano, with chapters devoted to nominal morphology and verbal morphology. This dissertation provides a reasonably comprehensive description and documentation of Desano, one of the most endangered Tukanoan languages. The descriptions of unusual typological traits (i.e., nasal harmony, evidentiality, verb serialization, etc.) contributes to the general linguistic scholarship in significant ways, since accurate accounts of the traits mentioned are of considerable interest for linguistic typology and theory generally.