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Comitative and Instrumental Postpositions in Uto-Aztecan
Jason D. Haugen
University of Arizona 1. Introduction The purpose of this paper is to document some of the (primarily suffixal) morphology used to
indicate the notions of accompaniment (comitative, COM) and instrumentality (INSTR) in
representative languages of the Uto-Aztecan (UA) language family. This morphology typically
comes in the form of postpositions, but can also be seen in relational noun constructions in various
UA languages. This project arose from earlier work on the reconstruction of Proto-Uto-Aztecan
(PUA) morphology related to the marking of predicative and attributive possession (Haugen 2006),
to which COM and INSTR are often related.
Haugen (2006) surveys the various derivational suffixes used to derive possessive verbs from
nominals in UA, and presents five reconstructions for source morphemes for such suffixes in PUA.
These reconstructions are *-ka, which marked alienable possession; *-pV, which marked inalienable
possession; *-tu, which marked what Heine (1997) calls “active possession”, originally meaning ‘get’
or ‘take’, but which has semantically shifted to BECOME or HAVE in different UA languages; *-
wa, which marked attributive possession (and was in complementary distribution with the PUA
“absolutive” marker of non-possessed nominals); and a postpositional element, *-ˆ. The semantics
of *-ˆ at this point are unclear, but typological considerations lead to some likely possibilities for the
original meaning, any one of which could then in turn have served as a source schema for
predicative possession in UA languages like Guarijío. These possibilities include locative, comitative,
and instrumental meanings.
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The unraveling of the original function of *-ˆ is particularly interesting since various historical
changes have led to a typologically anomalous syncretism in Guarijío. Stolz’s (1997, 2001) survey of
comitative and instrumental adpositions in languages across the world leads to an interesting
implicational generalization with respect to the marking of predicative possession. Although the
marking of INSTR and predicative possession with identical morphology is quite common, such
syncretism usually also involves identical marking for COM, or at least some notionally related
function (e.g. locative or conjunction). However, of the over three hundred languages that Stolz
surveyed, only three, including Guarijío, had syncretism for INSTR and predicative possession
without syncretism for COM or some other notionally related function. Examples of this
syncretism in Guarijío are given in (1) and (2):
Guarijío -é HAVE (1) kari-é=ne (Miller 1996a: 92) house-HAVE=1.SG ‘I have a house’ -é INSTR (2) a. pihtóla-e b. espáda-e (Miller 1996a: 286) pistol-with sword-with ‘with a pistol’ ‘with a sword’ These morphs in -é, derived by regular sound change from PUA *-ˆ (as in other Southern Uto-
Aztecan languages with the exception of Tepiman), are the typical, unmarked ways of marking
INSTR and predicative possession in Guarijío. The cognates of these morphemes can also be seen
in one or both of these functions in other UA languages.
In Yaqui, for example, -e is the marker for INSTR for singular instruments (3); plural instruments
are marked with –mea (4):
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Yaqui –e INSTR (sg.) (3) yeká-e ‘á’a húh-hu’ubwa (Dedrick and Casad 1999: 187 [31]) nose-INSTR it RED-smell ‘He smells it with his nose’ -mea INSTR (pl) (4) máa-m-mea náu ‘ám yécha (Dedrick and Casad 1999: 187 [32]) hand-PL-INSTR together them put ‘He puts them together with his hands’ Although it is much more subtle, the suffix –e also surfaces in a possessive function in Yaqui.
This can be seen by examining certain data from Yaqui reduplication. In Yaqui, reduplication of
nouns can be used to derive verbs to indicate habitual possession of the thing denoted by the noun
(Martínez 1994):
(5) hu-me naso-m ta-taka (Martínez 1994: 169 [11]) DET-PL orange.tree-PL RED-fruit ‘The orange trees have/give fruit (habitually)’ < taaka ‘fruit’ In most cases this seems to be a simple case of derivation by reduplication. For nouns that end in –
i, however, there is an additional morpho-phonological change: the word-final /i/ lowers to /e/:
(6) aapo hiva ka-kava’-e (Jelinek 2003: 202 [5]) 3.SG always RED-horse-? ‘S/he always has a horse’ < kava’i ‘horse’ Further, some nouns with word-final consonants also show the appearance of –e in the context of
possessive reduplication, as in (7):
(7) Huan mo-mochik-e (Haugen 2004: 264 [56d]) Huan RED-turtle-? ‘Huan usually has turtles’ < mochik ‘turtle’ This process can induce lenition of word-final /t/: (8) Carmen a-hoara-po wi-wiikich-e (Haugen 2004: 264 [57c])
Carmen 3SG.POSS-home-in RED-bird-HAVE ‘Carmen usually has birds in her home’ < wiikit ‘bird’
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Jelinek (2003) glosses this word-final –e as ‘imperfective’, but unlike the other tense, aspect, and
mood markings that can attach to nominals to derive possessive verbs, there is no otherwise attested
suffix –e with such a meaning, and –e cannot be used to derive a possessive verb independent of
reduplication (cf. 9a vs. 9b):1
(9)a. *aapo kava’-e b. aapo kava’i-ne 3.SG horse-IMPERF 3.SG horse-FUT ‘S/he has/had a horse’ ‘S/he will have a horse’ Haugen (2004) glosses the –e in these examples as HAVE, and connects the etymology of it to the
possessive and instrumental –e of Guarijío.
A possessive function for the reflex of *-ˆ elsewhere in Uto-Aztecan can be seen in Northern
Tepehuan. Bascom (1982) points out that, in addition to a lexical possessive verb (víáa), HAVE can
be “signaled by the juxtaposition of noun-noun, noun-pronoun, adjective noun, NP-NP, etc. If the
possessed noun ends in –i, the –i becomes -ˆ” (p. 283, emphasis added). This -ˆ is the expected Tepiman
reflex of PUA *-ˆ, which corresponds with –e in the other Southern Uto-Aztecan languages.
My claim here is that both Yaqui –e and Northern Tepehuan-ˆ are cognate with Guarijío –e, all
three being derived from a PUA postposition *-ˆ. The phonological forms match with the expected
synchronic vowel correspondences to PUA *ˆ, and the synchronic possessive semantics of these
forms match as well. The question that I would like to raise in the following is the original meaning
1 However, there is at least one noun that might be an exception to this generalization, possibly deriving a possessive verb by changing word-final /-i / to [-e]; i.e. vuki ‘pet’: (i) Arizona Yaqui (Molina et al. 1999 : 165) vuki n. ‘pet’, slave vuke v. own, raise (animals) (ii) Sonora Yaqui (Estrada et al. 2004: 68) buki , bukri n. crio, criatura buke v. ‘criar, poseer, tener’ Joan wakasim buke. ‘Joan keeps cows as pets’ It is not obvious that this is an example of actual synchronic derivation, as opposed to being the result of some historical process. Further, it is interesting to note that the semantic content of this particular noun might be relevant—the use of “pet classifiers” for marking the possession of animals is an important areal feature of “the Southwest” (Silver and Miller 1997).
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of the postposition *-ˆ. The data surveyed in Haugen (2006) suggest that the likely reconstructions
for suffixes creating denominal verbs of possession in PUA were *-ka (for alienable possession) and
*-pV (for inalienable possession). If *-ˆ was a postposition, as proposed by Haugen (2006), was it
possibly a comitative or instrumental in PUA?
The survey presented below leads us to conclude that the answer to this question is, “probably
not”. In section 2 we will survey the COM and INSTR postpositional suffixes across the family,
and in section 3 we will discuss the issues that arise when we try to do historical reconstruction of
these morphemes in UA.
2. Survey of COM and INSTR morphs in Uto-Aztecan A table listing the UA languages and sub-groups is given as Appendix A. In this section we will
survey attested UA morphs indicating COM and INSTR, examining representative languages from
each sub-group, proceeding roughly from north to south. The results of this survey are summarized
as Appendix B.
2.1. Numic The Numic sub-group is further sub-divided into three smaller groupings: Central, Western, and
Southern Numic. COM and INSTR marking in these languages is as follows. For Central Numic,
Western Shoshoni has–ma’ai (COM) and –ma (INSTR) (Crum and Dayley 1993); Gosiute Shoshone
has –main, -ma’in, -ma’ain (COM) and –pan or –man (INSTR) (Miller 1996b); and Comanche has –
ma’ai (COM) and –ma (INSTR) (Charney 1993). In Western Numic, Northern Paiute has –no
(COM) and -ma (INSTR) (Thornes 2003). And in Southern Numic, Southern Paiute contains –ma’ai
or -Nwa’ai (COM), which are interestingly suppletive for animacy (the former is used with
inanimates, while the latter is used with animates), and –ma (INSTR) (Sapir 1930).
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These results are summarized in Table 1.
Sub-Group Language COM INSTR NUMIC Western Shoshoni -ma’ai -ma CNum Gosiute Shoshone -main, -ma’in, -ma’ain -pan, -man Comanche -ma’ai -ma WNum N. Paiute -no -ma SNum S. Paiute -ma’ai (inan.)
-Nwa’ai (anim.) -ma
Table 1. COM and INSTR in Numic The Numic languages are known to be relatively closely related, and as an examination of Table 1
clearly reveals, with the exception of the Northern Paiute marker for COM (-no), the forms for both
notions are clearly cognate across these languages; they might themselves even be etymologically
related, each being reflected in some variation on the initial sequence –ma. We will undertake a
more thorough comparative examination of the various forms for COM and INSTR throughout UA
in section 3.
2.2. Takic The Takic languages are also sub-divided into smaller groupings, Cupan and Serrano-Gabrielino. In
the Cupan group, Cupeño has –men and –menew for COM (where the former indicates ‘with,
willingly’, and the latter indicates ‘with, unwillingly’), as well as -chi for INSTR (Hill 2005). 2
Jacobs (1975) reports –man for COM in Cahuilla, whereas Seiler (1979) reports –new. Given
Cahuilla’s close relationship to Cupeño, which has both -men and -menew, perhaps both are
possibilities, with some semantic distinction between the two. Both Jacobs and Seiler list –pic and –
pish, respectively, as the postposition for INSTR. As Jacobs (1975: 19) suggests, however, the “–pi-”
element of the Cahuilla INSTR postposition is a third person pronominal element, the cognate of
2 Like Pipil and Nahuatl (see below), Cupeño employs relational noun constructions rather than postpositions, per se. In form and function, however, these seem plausibly (historically) derived from postpositions. Compare Cupeño -men, for example, to Gosiute Shoshone –main, both of which indicate COM.
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which is also attested as an option for INSTR constructions in Cupeño.3,4 In Table 2 I only list the –
c/-sh for the instrumental in Cahuilla.
The Luiseño COM postposition is –man, which corresponds to the equivalent in Cahuilla, and,
with the exception of the vowel quality, Cupeño. Jacobs reports the INSTR in Luiseño as –tal or –
chal, which does not have the same form, but which (like INSTR in Cupeño and Cahuilla) does take
a pronominal element (e.g. ‘óno-pi-cal ‘by means of that’).
In Serranan, Anderton (1988) reports –y or –ay for INSTR in Kitanemuk. Interestingly, this
could correspond to –chi and–c in Cupan, if Manaster Ramer’s (1993) law of NUA lenition applied in
Kitanemuk but was blocked in the Cupan languages (see footnote 4). At present, however, there is
too little information to make such a connection. For COM, Anderton gives a postpositional form,
-mea/, as well as -cˆva/, which Anderton notes is apparently “the verb ‘to accompany’” (p. 288).
Sub-Group Language COM INSTR TAKIC
Cupeño -men -menew
-chi
Cupan Cahuilla: Jacobs Seiler
-man -new
-c -sh
Luiseño -man -tal , -chal Serranan Kitanemuk -mea/, -cˆva/, -y, -ay
Table 2. COM and INSTR in Takic
3 -chi can variably appear with nominals or with pronominals in Cupeño, as in the following examples: (i) a. kelawet pe-chi b. ne-ma-chi (Hill 2005: 192) stick it-with my-hand-with ‘with a stick’ ‘with my hand’ 4 Jacobs (1975: 20) reconstructs *pe-ci ‘him/it-with/about’ as the source form, which he argues is also the ultimate source for the Cahuilla complementizer pic. Here I only wish to point out the lack of lenition of medial –c– in this reconstruction , which should have resulted in medial –y– by Manaster Ramer’s (1993) sound law of Northern Uto-Aztecan. This lenition would not have applied if the original medial consonant was –t–, which could have later undergone palatalization due to the following –i. Such a later development has been used to explain other instances of medial –c– in Northern Uto-Aztecan (Stubbs 2000).
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2.3. Tübatulabal Tübatulabal is one of the two “isolates” within Northern Uto-Aztecan (NUA).
Voegelin (1935) lists the INSTR postposition of Tübatulabal as –c . In form and function this
resembles the -c and -chi of Cupan. As in Cupeño, but unlike Cahuilla, the Tübatulabal INSTR does
not seem to be limited to pronominal bases:
(x) e·΄eba΄ ma·΄wı΄cula΄-c (Voegelin 1935: 152)
he-hit-him pole-with
‘He hit him with a pole’ Voegelin shows that this INSTR suffix can compose with the possessive suffix –ka for what he
terms the “animate instrument of action suffix”, (i)-c-ka, which indicates “duty, futurity, intention,
necessity, and so on”, depending on the context of its use (1935: 158-59).
Voegelin does not include a form indicating COM (or anything similar) in his list of “secondary
cases” in Tübatulabal (pp. 151-2).
Sub-Group Language COM INSTR TÜBATULABAL Tübatulabal -c Table 3. COM and INSTR in Tübatulabal 2.4. Hopi Hopi is the second isolate within NUA. The Hopi Dictionary (Hopi Dictionary Project 1999) lists
(a)mum for COM and (-)akw and –pi for INSTR. In the form for COM, the parentheticized element
is a pronominal, in this case third person singular (‘together with him/her’), although any
pronominal is able to fill that slot (e.g. inumum, ‘with me’). The postposition akw seems to be
optionally bound to its nominal complement. The Hopi Dictionary notes that for the suffix –pi “the
difference between this suffix and the nominalizing suffix –pi is sometimes not clear” (p. 409).
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Sub-Group Language COM INSTR HOPI Hopi (a)mum (-)akw
-pi Table 4. COM and INSTR in Hopi 2.5. Tepiman The Tepiman languages are composed of “Upper Piman”, the varieties of O’odham (Tohono
O’odham, formerly known as “Papago”, and Pima, or Akimel O’odham), and “Lower Piman”, i.e.
Pima Bajo and various varieties of Tepehuan.
Saxton et al. (1983) give prepositional forms for INSTR and COM in Tohono O’odham: hekaj
and wehm (and/or wehmaj), respectively. Saxton (1982) additionally provides the postpositional forms
-kud 1 for INSTR. For Northern Tepehuan, Bascom (1982) has ˆˆmádu for COM. For Southeastern
Tepehuan, Solís et al. (2005) provide kˆ'n for INSTR, and bˆˆm for COM.
Sub-Group Language COM INSTR TEPIMAN Tohono O’odham wehm
(wehmaj) hekaj -kud1 -mad
N. Tepehuan ˆˆmádu
SE Tepehuan bˆˆm kˆ'n Table 5. COM and INSTR in Tepiman 2.6. Taracahitic The Taracahitic sub-group is composed of “Cáhita”, the colonial name for what we now know as
the separate but closely related languages of Yaqui and Mayo, and the varieties of Tarahumara
(Rarámuri) and Guarijío.
In Yaqui, COM is marked with –mak, which also has the variants –mak-e and –e-mak (Dedrick
and Casad 1999). The INSTR suffix is suppletive for number: for singular it is –e, while the plural
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form is –mea. The closely related language Mayo has –mak (or –make or –mek) for COM, and –i (or
–(V)yi and -mea for INSTR (de Wolf 1997).
As mentioned above, the INSTR postposition in Guarijío is –e. COM is marked with one of two
prepositions, pehá or amáha (Miller 1996a). The postpositional forms of Central Rarámuri are -(y)úa’
for COM and –ti for INSTR (Caballero 2005). Interestingly, the Central Rarámuri INSTR marker
looks like an unlenited form of the INSTR suffix attested in Takic and Tübatulabal.
Sub-Group Language COM INSTR TARACAHITIC Yaqui -mak
-make, -emak -e (sg.) -mea (pl.)
Mayo -mak -make, -mek
-i -mea
Guarijío pehá , amáha -e (Central) Rarámuri -(y)úa’ -ti Table 6. COM and INSTR in Taracahitic 2.7. Corachol-Aztecan The final sub-group of Uto-Aztecan is Corachol-Aztecan, which contains Cora and Huichol, on the
one hand, and “Aztecan”, the various dialects of Nahuatl as well as Pipil.
Cora has hamwan and hemi for COM, and the related forms kˆn and kˆme’en for INSTR (Casad
1984, 1992).
Rather than having true postpositions, Pipil and Nahuatl employ relational noun constructions
(Campbell 1985: 61; Andrews 2003: 445), which involve possessive prefixes attaching to noun-like
stems. Etymologically, however, these stems seem plausibly derived from postpositions, which are
reconstructable for PUA (Langacker 1977), at least for certain adposition-like meanings, such as
COM and INSTR.
In Classical Nahuatl, the relational suffix corresponding to COM was –wān (e.g. tē-huān,
somebody-with, ‘in someone’s company, with someone’; no-huān, my-with, ‘in my company, with
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me’) (Andrew 2003: 448); the INSTR relational noun stem was īk, although this form could be
semantically extended to other meanings beyond means (e.g. purpose, reason, cause, or time
(Andrews 2003: 450).
The relational noun stem for COM in Pipil is also –wan (e.g. nu-wan ‘with me’, tu-wan ‘with us’)
(Campbell 1985: 60). Although –wan is listed under the entry ‘con’ in Campbell’s Spanish-Pipil
dictionary, it is not clear if this meaning extends to INSTR in addition to COM in Pipil. Stolz (1997:
185), however, includes Pipil among the languages with syncretism of COM and INSTR. He points
out, however, that such a syncretism is not as common cross-linguistically as might be expected
from a small sample of Indo-European languages.
Sub-Group Language COM INSTR CORACHOL- AZTECAN
Cora hamwan hemi
kˆme’en kˆn
Classical Nahuatl -wan ik Pipil -wan -wan (?) Table 7. COM and INSTR in Corachol-Aztecan 3. Discussion This survey of the morphological marking of COM and INSTR in UA languages leads to several
conclusions. First, there is notable variation in the morpho-syntactic constructions that are used for
these functions. Most of the UA languages simply utilize postpositions, but some (e.g. Nahuatl,
Pipil, and Cupeño) use relational noun constructions. I have assumed here that postpositions can
probably be reconstructed for PUA, and that the relational noun constructions are more recent
developments in the languages that have them.
We turn now to a discussion comparing the actual forms used for COM and INSTR.
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3.1. Issues for comparative reconstruction of COM and INSTR in UA
The data presented above, which are summarized in Appendix B, do not lead to obvious
reconstructions of PUA postpositions for either COM or INSTR in PUA. Most of the languages do
not have syncretistic patterns for these notions, although it is notable that most of the Numic
languages (excepting Northern Paiute) do, and Pipil possibly does as well (-wan). Numic forms for
INSTR are typically at least initially –ma, and COM is typically –ma plus something else: e.g. –ma’ai
or –ma’in.
Other comparative work within UA historical linguistics (e.g. Miller 1988, and addenda to that
work) has identified a root element *ma- for ‘hand’ in PUA, which would naturally fit with an early
meaning of INSTR for a postposition of similar form, as possibly retained in the Numic languages.
Postpositional (or nominal) elements with similar form are attested elsewhere in the family, but
intriguingly, usually for COM. These include the forms that we see for COM in Takic, Northern
Tepehuan (and possibly also in O’odham wehmaj), and Taracahitic. INSTR with –ma may also be
found in Tohono O’odham. More remote possible connections might involve Corachol-Aztecan –
wan; –mea is found for INSTR in Taracahitic (Yaqui and Mayo) (and note -mea/ for COM in
Kitanemuk), and kˆme’en is INSTR in Cora. However, the m≈w consonants in the former, and lack
of vowel correspondence in the latter, makes these forms suspect, and thus I am hesitant to connect
them to the –ma and –ma’ai of the NUA languages.
Because of the semantic affinity between PUA **ma- ‘hand’ and -ma INSTR, I propose a
reconstruction of a postposition *-ma for INSTR in an earlier stage of UA development. Since its
distribution as an INSTR marker seems limited to the Numic languages, I propose that this was an
innovation in proto-Numic. Although on the surface it looks like Numic COM markers may be
derived from INSTR –ma, at this time I do not have a specific proposal for such a suggestion. The
Numic COM forms (–ma’ai, etc.), might be related to other COM forms that we see in other UA
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languages (e.g. Taracahitic –mak(e)), which may ultimately derive from some source other than PUA
*ma- ‘hand’, and which may be etymologically unrelated to *-ma INSTR.
A second likely reconstruction for an early INSTR, however, is **-ti, which is found in multiple
branches of Northern Uto-Aztecan as well as in Southern Uto-Aztecan. Thus, I propose (at least
tentatively) **-ti as a marker of INSTR in PUA. If legitimate, this morph remains largely unchanged
in its function in Central Tarahumara, but would have undergone lenition in NUA (Takic and
Tübatulabal), i.e. palatalization of /t/ preceding the high front vowel. This lenition would have had
to have occurred after Manaster Ramer’s law of lenition of medial –c-.
A firm reconstruction for PUA COM, as well as the original sources of extant markers for both
COM and INSTR that may be derived from other sources in various languages, must wait for future
careful historical work. These will probably not be revealed until a more thorough and systematic
investigation of a larger portion of the PUA postpositional system itself is undertaken. This will be
no easy task, however, as I will briefly discuss in section 3.2.
3.2. General Problems for Reconstructing UA Postpositions
There are several general problems inherent to any attempt at providing reconstructions of
postpositions for PUA. First, and perhaps most obviously from the discussion above, some of the
UA languages do not have postpositions, but rather, employ relational noun constructions. I have
been assuming that the latter are innovations, but it may be the case that this assumption will be
shown to be incorrect.
A second problem is the fact that the original form of some postpositions are obscured by
various historical morphological changes that have occurred, including especially the development of
free adpositional forms from the reanalysis of bound forms attached to a pronominal or
demonstrative. In this context I discussed Jacobs’ (1975) reconstruction of an earlier form *pi-ci
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(or, as proposed here, *pi-ti) for INSTR in Cahuilla, which in dictionary citation form is pic (Seiler
1979); the *pi- was a pronominal form, and the INSTR suffix was simply *-ci (or *-ti). The
historical analysis makes this form clearly related to the Cupeño INSTR-marker –chi. This kind of
reanalysis is common to other postpositions within UA. Langacker (1977: 93-4) gives an additional
example from Yaqui, where betuk ‘under’ is historically derived from *be-tuk ‘it-under’.
Additionally, UA postpositions are subject to language-specific syntactic-, morphological-, or
phonologically-conditioned allomorphy. The Yaqui INSTR is suppletive for number, with –e
signifying singular and –mea signifying plural. COM in Cupeño is differentiated based on the level of
willingness of one of the participants to be in company with the other (-men ‘with, willingly’, or –
menew ‘with, unwillingly’). COM in Southern Paiute is differentiated according to animacy, with –
ma’ai being used for inanimates and -Nwa’ai being used for animates.
Finally, Givón (2000) points out that new postpositions have been developed from other
grammatical classes, especially from nouns, but also from verbs. All of these factors collude to
problematize the reconstruction of postpositions for PUA generally, and some of these factors may
have obscured the development of COM and INSTR specifically.
4. Conclusion This paper has surveyed the morphemes, typically postpositions, used to indicate the notions
comitative (COM) and instrumental (INSTR) in the Uto-Aztecan languages. As the discussion
above has shown, these morphs have a complicated history in UA. I have tentatively reconstructed
an INSTR postposition for PUA: *-ti, which has been retained (after palatalization) in Takic and
Tübatulabal, but which is retained without change in Tarahumara. The limited distribution of *-ma
as INSTR, likely related to PUA **ma- ‘hand’, means that it could have been an innovation unique
to Proto-Numic.
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In all probability, the overall history of INSTR and COM is intimately related to the development
of the marking of predicative possession in these languages (Haugen 2006). Heine (1997)
investigates the cross-linguistic typology of possession-marking, and he proposes several
possible source schemas for the development of possession marking. These are summarized in
Table 3; source schemas attested in UA are marked in bold:
Formula Label of event schema (Heine 1997: 47 [Table 2.1]) X takes Y Y is located at X X is with Y X’s Y exists Y exists for/to X Y exists from X As for X, Y (of X) exists Y is X’s (property)
Action Location Companion Genitive Goal Source Topic Equation
Table 3. A formulaic description of schemas used for the expression of predicative possession Early UA *-ˆ is a likely postposition that fits into the history of UA postpositions and possession-
marking somehow. Given the prevalence of locational notions in Heine’s typology of source
schemas, and following Stolz’s (2001) hypothesis that syncretism of INSTR and possessive
functions in languages like Guarijío requires a “bridging function” (i.e. some additional semantic
mechanism that allowed such a syncretism), I hypothesize that *-ˆ might have been a locative in
PUA. Future historical analysis of UA suffixal morphology may provide a more definitive
reconstruction of *-ˆ’s original function, as well as the various developments that must have
occurred since the break-up of PUA to lead to the diversity attested in the extant UA languages.
For the reasons mentioned above, such reconstruction may prove difficult for postpositions
especially. However, we will not unravel these mysterious unless and until we make the effort.
There is still much work to be done and many discoveries to make in UA historical linguistics,
particularly in the area of suffixal morphology. Tracing the historical developments of the
morphology of these languages will continue to contribute to our general understanding of language
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change, and may lead to the solution of some current issues in Uto-Aztecan family-internal sub-
grouping.
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APPENDIX A
THE UTO-AZTECAN LANGUAGES AND SUB-GROUPS
The Uto-Aztecan Language Family
Northern Uto-Aztecan (?) Numic a. Western Numic: Mono, Northern Paiute b. Central Numic: Panamint, Shoshone, Comanche c. Southern Numic: Kawaiisu, Ute (Chemehuevi, Southern Paiute, Ute) Tübatulabal Tübatulabal Takic a. Serrano-Gabrielino (1) Serranan: Serrano, Kitanemuk (2) *Gabrielino (Gabrielino, Fernandino) b. Cupan (1) Cupeño, Cahuilla (2) Luiseño Hopi Hopi Southern Uto-Aztecan (?) Sonoran (?) a. Tepiman: Upper Piman (Tohono O’odham, Akimel O’odham, *Nevome), Pima Bajo, Northern Tepehuan, Southern Tepehuan b. Taracahitan (1) Tarahumaran: Rarámuri (Tarahumara), Guarijío (2) Opatan: *Opata, *Eudeve (3) Cahitan: Yaqui, Mayo c. Tubar Tubar Corachol-Aztecan a. Corachol: Cora, Huichol b. Aztecan (1) Pochutec (2) General Aztec: Pipil, Aztec (many varieties) * = an extinct language
(adapted from Miller 1984)
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APPENDIX B COMITATIVE AND INSTRUMENTAL MORPHS OF UTO-AZTECAN
Sub-Group Language COM INSTR NUMIC Western Shoshoni -ma’ai -ma CNum Gosiute Shoshone -main, -ma’in, -ma’ain -pan, -man Comanche -ma’ai -ma WNum N. Paiute -no -ma SNum S. Paiute -ma’ai (inan.)
-Nwa’ai (anim.) -ma
TAKIC
Cupeño -men -menew
-chi
Cupan Cahuilla: Jacobs Seiler
-man -new
-c -sh
Luiseño -man -tal , -chal Serranan Kitanemuk -mea/, -cˆva/, -y, -ay
TÜBATULABAL Tübatulabal -c HOPI Hopi (a)mum (-)akw
-pi TEPIMAN Tohono O’odham wehm
(wehmaj) hekaj -kud1 -mad
N. Tepehuan ˆˆmádu
TARACAHITIC Yaqui -mak
-make, -emak -e (sg.) -mea (pl.)
Mayo -mak -make, -mek
-i -mea
Guarijío pehá , amáha -e (Central) Rarámuri -(y)úa’ -ti CORACHOL- AZTECAN
Cora hamwan hemi
kˆme’en kˆn
Classical Nahuatl -wan ik Pipil -wan -wan?
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