Pattie Epps : "Grammaticalization in Amazonia: the exuberant interplay of maintenance and change"

"Amazonia presents a linguistic landscape of remarkable diversity, yet one that also has been shaped by contact and convergence among different languages over time. These processes have led to extensive grammatical restructuring in some languages and regions, even where the direct borrowing of lexical and morphological forms has been restrained. Grammaticalization allows for native material to be repurposed and molded into new structures and categories, which in some cases gives rise to outcomes that appear unusual or extreme from a cross-linguistic perspective. Such unusual processes include instances of ‘debonding’ (developing more morphosyntactic independence rather than less), the flexible behavior of functional elements as between morphology and syntax, the relative promiscuity of grammatical elements’ association with different word classes, and high levels of innovation within morphological inventories. Some of these phenomena can be linked to areally relevant structural characteristics, particularly the prevalence of verb serialization and noun incorporation, and an emphasis on nominalization as a subordination strategy. Many can also be shown to be grounded in locally salient sociolinguistic practices, most notably relating to zones of intensive, stable multilingualism. In this talk, I focus in particular on languages of the small Naduhup family, which has undergone extensive grammatical restructuring through the influence of diverse neighboring languages."

Zoom link : https://cnrs.zoom.u/j/93061811853?pwd=Iaj5nUb0rxQ3ombDlZN2KIiUbFSwi1.1
 

Patience Epps is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on Amazonian languages and engages with language documentation, typology, and contact and change.
She is a 2024-25 Fellow at the Collegium de Lyon.


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