The contribution of amazonian languages to the typology of purpose clauses

Abstract

This investigation offers an analysis of the variation in the expression of purpose relations in a sample of 49 Amazonian languages. The most common strategies are conjunctions and converbs. Interestingly, in a number of Amazonian languages, positive purpose meanings are expressed with a conjunction or a converb in combination with other morphosyntactic properties. We briefly examine the areality of positive purpose clause-linkage patterns in four contact zones in the Amazonia: the Vaupés region, the Caquetá-Putumayo region, the Southern Guiana region, and the Marañon-Huallaga region. Besides analyzing the range of ways by which positive purpose clauses are realized in the sample, we also investigate avertive clauses in a number of languages of the database. Amazonian languages show an interesting typological picture in that they tend to have avertive markers which may be intraclausal or relational.