Asymmetries among Person Indexes in Kawahíva

Abstract

Several Tupí-Guaraní languages have a set of indexes for the subject argument and one set of indexes for the object argument. Previous discussions of these markers have not reached a consensus. Some works have suggested that subject markers are inflectional, but object markers are pronominal (e.g., Cardoso 2008 for Kaiowá, a.o.). An alternative approach, however, suggests through notational choices that both sets are inflectional (Gregóres and Suárez 1967 for Paraguayan Guaraní). This paper draws on original data from Kawahíva and documents asymmetries found in patterns of i) NP and index co-occurrence, ii) reduplication, and iii) root allomorphy between subject indexes (here called Set A) and object indexes (called Set B). I argue the differences between the two sets follow straightforwardly in the former view, which claims that Set A is inflectional and Set B is pronominal.