Differential Subject Marking in Arawakan Languages: Distribution and Origins

Abstract

This paper is a comparison of nine Arawakan languages sharing a rare phenomenon in the Americas: differential subject marking. We argue that the languages involved display a group of predicates with oblique case marking on the subject, similar to the subject-like obliques in Icelandic and Hindi. Comparison with bivalent constructions provides a strong argument for the diachronic process of objects gradually acquiring subject properties. In addition, we discuss the distribution of this oblique marking and object marking in some of the Arawakan languages. This paper shows that these two marking strategies are in fact complementary; the existence of these two markings allows expressing semantico-pragmatics subtleties. Thus, it illustrates a specific realization of the differential marking of the subject in non-accusative languages. Examining the possibilities of language contact with non-Arawakan languages, such as Tukanoan or Witotoan languages, or between Arawakan languages, especially in the North-Western region of Amazonia, we conclude that this phenomenon is inherited in the Arawakan language family, considering the absence of other languages with such differential marking in South America and the attestations of this phenomenon in Arawakan languages as many as 500 years ago.