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Untangling the evolution of body-part terminology in Pano: conservative versus innovative traits in body-part lexicalization
(Royal Society, 2022-12-09)
Although language-family specific traits which do not find direct counterparts outside a given language family are usually ignored in quantitative phylogenetic studies, scholars have made ample use of them in qualitative investigations, revealing their potential for identifying language relationships. An example of such a family specific trait are body-part expressions in Pano languages, which are often lexicalized forms, composed of bound roots (also called body-part prefixes in the literature) and non-productive derivative morphemes (called here body-part formatives). We use various statistical methods to demonstrate that whereas body-part roots are generally conservative, body-part formatives exhibit diverse chronologies and are often the result of recent and parallel innovations. In line with this, the phylogenetic structure of body-part roots projects the major branches of the family, while formatives are highly non-tree-like. Beyond its contribution to the phylogenetic analysis of Pano languages, this study provides significative insights into the role of grammatical innovations for language classification, the origin of morphological complexity in the Amazon and the phylogenetic signal of specific grammatical traits in language families.
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The poetics of the journey in the traditional songs of the Kakataibo people
(University of Alicante, 2025-01-01)
El presente artículo se propone contribuir al conocimiento sobre el arte verbal del pueblo kakataibo, el cual se manifiesta en una compleja red de formas cantadas de lenguaje que se usaron tradicionalmente por miembros de este pueblo en distintos espacios sociales e íntimos. Este sistema establecía una distinción bastante nítida entre géneros que podían ser cantados por hombres y géneros que podían ser cantados por mujeres. Nuestro estudio se centra en un motivo que se repite en varios de las canciones que forman parte de nuestro corpus musical del pueblo kakataibo: el viaje. Mostramos aquí las estrategias poéticas y discursivas empleadas por hombres y mujeres para hablar del viaje: el uso de colores y de metáforas, por ejemplo, pero también la construcción de un yo poético radicalmente diferente para cada caso. El hombre kakataibo canta de sus viajes, se muestra fuerte, valiente y siempre guerrero. Es él quien viaja. La mujer kakataibo, por otra parte, se muestra frágil. Llora recordando a quienes partieron. Ella no viaja, pero se quiebra al ver partir a sus familiares. Se trata de una dualidad que se complementa, un mismo viaje visto desde dos perspectivas distintas, cantadas desde dos yo poéticos distintos. El hombre indestructible y la mujer frágil son, en realidad, dos personajes idealizados que se van construyendo a través de los versos.
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Making up numbers in Pano languages: idiosyncratic and unconventional base-free quantification inventories in Amazonia
(Royal Society, 2025-10-20)
Amazonian languages typically exhibit very small numeral systems or lack numerals altogether. Increasing economic and cultural pressures, however, often motivate the emergence of more complex inventories for exact quantification. Headwaters Pano languages from Amazonia historically had two lexical items that can be rendered as the numerals 'one' and 'two'. We argue here, however, that they are not either etymologically or synchronically proper numerals (like the English ones are) and can be better glossed as 'single/one' (but also 'a few') and 'pair/two'. For larger quantities ('three' to 'ten'), speakers report idiosyncratic quantifying expressions based on different compositional strategies that recruit the lexical items for 'single/one', 'pair/two', but also 'hand' and, in some cases, other body-part expressions and motion verbs as well. We discuss these idiosyncratic quantifying expressions, showing that they do not present systematic and productive number bases; they exhibit unusual patterns of inter- and intra-speaker variability (i.e. they are poorly conventionalized); and they are rarely used in discourse. Based on these properties, we conclude that these quantifying expressions of Headwaters Pano languages are not numerals proper. We then explore the implications of these salient characteristics for the cross-cultural understanding of quantification and the emergence of numerical systems and the study of anumeric languages in Amazonia.This article is part of the theme issue 'A solid base for scaling up: the structure of numeration systems'.
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