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This is a comprehensive reference grammar of Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from a remote region in the northwest Amazonian jungle. Its speakers traditionally marry someone speaking a different language, and as a result most people are fluent in five or six languages. Because of this rampant multilingualism, Tariana combines a number of features inherited from the protolanguage with properties diffused from neighbouring but unrelated Tucanoan languages. Typologically unusual features of the language include: an array of classifiers independent of genders, complex serial verbs, case marking depending on the topicality of a noun, and double marking of case and of number. Tariana has obligatory evidentiality: every sentence contains a special element indicating whether the information was seen, heard, or inferred by the speaker, or whether the speaker acquired it from somebody else. This grammar will be a valuable source-book for linguists and others interested in natural languages.

Tariana language --- Yavi language --- Arawakan languages --- Grammar. --- Arts and Humanities --- Language & Linguistics

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One of the most complex topics in the study of the indigenous languages of the Americas, and indeed in the study of any language set, is the complex behaviour of multi-verb constructions. In many languages, several verbs can co-occur in a sentence, forming a single predicate. This book contains a first survey of such constructions in languages of North, Middle, and South America. Though it is not a systematic typological survey, the combined insights from the various chapters give a very rich perspective on this phenomenon, involving a host of typologically diverse constructions, including serial verb constructions, auxiliaries, co-verbs, phasal verbs, incorporated verbs, et cetera Aikhenvald's long introduction puts the chapters into a single perspective.

Grammar, Comparative and general --- Indians of North America --- Indians of South America --- American aborigines --- American Indians --- First Nations (North America) --- Indians of the United States --- Indigenous peoples --- Native Americans --- North American Indians --- Coordination (Linguistics) --- Parallelism (Linguistics) --- Verb --- Coordinate constructions. --- Verb. --- Languages --- Grammar. --- Languages. --- Culture --- Ethnology --- Syntax --- Verb phrase --- Verbals --- Reflexives --- Verbe (Linguistique) --- Langues indiennes d'Amérique --- Coordonnées (Linguistique) --- Grammaire --- Linguistics --- Philology