Book Description

This book is first and foremost a grammatical description of Baure, a seriously endangered language from Bolivian Amazonia. Baure belongs to the Southern Arawak language family and it forms part of the Guapor -Mamor linguistic area. This book is the first detailed and comprehensive grammatical description of Baure, covering its phonology, morphology, syntax, and discourse stucture. It is based on the author's extensive fieldwork in Bolivia in 2003, 2004, and 2006. The book furthermore addresses the historical, cultural, and sociolinguistic background of the speakers of Baure. Special attention is given to th e complex (morpho)phonological processes within a phonological phrase, the rich noun classification system, the distinction of verbal and non-verbal predicates with respect to the argument marking pattern, the three-level distinction of verbal morphology, and specific clause types based on different nominalization strategies, which also play an important role in clause subordination. The relation to the surrounding Southern Arawak languages Trinitario, Ignaciano, and Paunaca is investigated through comparison of the lexicon and the grammar. The appendices contain different text types, lists of grammatical morphemes, classifiers, and the Swadesh 200 word list. It is a highly valuable addition to our knowledge of South American languages and cultures in general and the Arawak languages in particular. This book is aimed at linguists from all backgrounds and is of special interest to typologists, historical linguists, Arawakanists, Americanists, and anthropologists. It is also an important record of a dying language for its speech community and their descendants.