Abstract

This thesis is a corpus and narrative-based description of how the lexical aspect of predicates with the switch reference same subject (SS) suffix -ʃa affects the meaning of utterances in Pastaza Kichwa (PK), a Quechuan dialect spoken in Amazonian Ecuador. The main purpose of this thesis is to describe how verb chains that use -ʃa are affected by lexical aspect. The secondary purpose is to compare these uses with current grammars, and determine whether there are more uses than are currently proposed in the most recent grammar of PK. The most recent grammar of PK lists the functions of the coreference -ʃa as being indicative of simultaneous and sequential actions (Nuckolls & Swanson, 2020). I argue that not only does the lexical aspect of predicates in a -ʃa verb chain determine simultaneity and sequentiality, but there is a third category of habitual action that is at least partially determined by the lexical aspect of -ʃa verb chains. After introducing the concept of switch reference, I introduce the concept of lexical aspect. From there I discuss my methodology and analysis, which is based on Van Valin’s (2006) tests and categories of lexical aspect. My analysis is composed of text examples from the Quechua Realwords (QRW) corpus (Nuckolls, 2021), and a PK narrative about Noah and the Flood. These are supplemented by examples from the Corpus of Pastaza Kichwa (CoPK) compiled by Rice (2018). These examples are used to demonstrate the lexical aspect of each verb in a -ʃa verb chain.

Degree

College and Department

Humanities; Linguistics and English Language

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