Avaliação: Determination and definiteness in the languages of the Americas/Determinación y definitud en las lenguas de América – Referential, definite and non-definite in Pilagá

Pilagá (Guaycuruan) is an endangered South American Indian language spoken by 5000 people in the Gran Chaco. In this language nearly all nouns require a determiner, so they are ubiquitous in discourse. Previous analyses (Vidal 2001; Payne and Vidal 2020) identified different constructions: demonstrative roots with deictic, pointing-out, or joint-attention functions; demonstrative construction (Dem), a word-level construction that contains a deictic or joint-attention establishing root other than just a classifier; determiner (D), any classifier in adnominal position. They can function demonstratively, pronominally, adverbially. Assuming these categories, we examine their referential function in narrative and procedural texts collected during fieldwork.
We aim to explore the use of demonstratives vis-à-vis simple classifier constructions in referring to entities in discourse and the functional properties that contribute to bringing such entities into attention, and thus making them accessible to reference. We situate our discussion in the reintroduction of referents after their first mention and the need to restructure discourse according to the speaker´s intention to indicate familiarity with respect to certain referents, a topic recently addressed in the literature on other American languages (Helmbrecht 2021, 2022, inter alia). We show that speakers have resources to compensate for the lack of definite articles in Pilagá.

• referntiality / discourse / grammar/ texts/Guaycuruan