Complex predicates and space in Dâw (Naduhup language, AM)

Abstract

Abstract Complex predication is understood to be a highly productive process in Northwestern Amazonian languages in which complex predicates may be realized as compounds, verb-auxiliary constructions or serial verb constructions depending on language-internal criteria. These constructions play an important role in the organization of discourse and information packaging and can also carry out grammatical functions such as increasing or decreasing valency. In Dâw, a language from the Naduhup family, complex predicates are used to express spatial notions such as directionality and manner in complex motion events or to provide detailed of how complex predicates in Dâw function as semantic and syntactic resources used to express space in discourse in comparison to their expression in simple predicates. I provide a typology of the most frequent patterns and their respective ordering principles found in our corpus in order to understand how fine-grained spatial notions are expressed in Dâw.