Lexically driven patterns of contact in alignment systems of languages of the northern Upper Amazon

Abstract Despite ample attention in the literature for alignment patterns and case frames more generally, we know very little about how these elements of grammar spread from one language to another in a contact situation. Achieving a better understanding of this will help explain areal patterns in alignment and grammatical relation marking. In this contribution, we zoom in on a contact situation in the foothills of North-West Amazon, where languages of the Quechuan and Tukanoan families are in contact, and where previous authors have suggested that grammatical relation marking shows many potential contact effects. We find that, despite the absence of loanwords, abstract lexico-grammatical information associated with individual lexical items may spread from one language to another, especially within the class of sensation predicates. These can be characterized as lexically driven diffusion patterns, without formal borrowing, consistent with an overall characterization of the area’s sociolinguistics as loanword-avoiding.