A grammar of Wayana

Abstract

Wayana is a Cariban language spoken in northern Brazil, southern Surinam, and southern French Guyana by a total of around 900 speakers. The previous descriptive works on this language consist of a few vocabulary lists, a short grammar sketch, and a few articles on specific topics. This dissertation contributes to the documentation of the language by providing a more detailed description of most aspects of the Wayana grammar. The chapters range from a description of the language's phonological aspects to the morphology of the speech classes and the basic syntactic patterns. In addition, the appendixes include a collection of texts and a vocabulary list. Patterns discussed in this work include those of syllable reduction, in which words may undergo reduction of entire syllables; differences in the possessibility of nouns, which depend on semantic and cultural considerations; the complex system of spatial postpositions distinguishing features such as the position, path or goal of a trajector vis-a-vis its landmark; and a split ergative system in which no motivation for the split has yet been explained. The data used in this work were obtained through elicitation sessions and from recordings of spoken narratives.