Bora loans in Resígaro (Arawakan): Massive morphological and little lexical borrowing in a moribund Arawakan language

This study analyzes the influence of Bora (Boran) on Resígaro (Arawakan), two languages of the Colombian-Peruvian Amazon region, using a newly discovered Resígaro wordlist from the 1930s (Manuel María de Mataró no date), another wordlist from the late 1920s (Rivet & Wavrin 1951), and another from the early 1970s (Allin 1976:382-458). It shows that despite heavy structural and morphological influence (Aikhenvald 2001:182-190) Resígaro has borrowed relatively few lexical items, around 5% in all three sources. It also shows that the borrowing of entire sets of grammatical morphemes, including classifiers, number markers, and bound grammatical roots that is observable in contemporary Resígaro (Seifart 2011) goes back to at least the early 20th century. This suggests that this remarkable case of massive morphological borrowing is not merely an effect of language decay, linked to the current language endangerment situation of Resígaro, with only two surviving speakers [Title Page] [Colophon] Table of Contents Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations List of Tables 1. Introduction 1.1. Aims of this study 1.2. Resigaro’s genealogical affiliation and its relation to Bora 1.3. Historical and ethnographic background 2. Resígaro sources from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1970s 2.1. A wordlist from the late 1920s collected by Robert de Wavrin 2.2. Three wordlists from the 1930s collected by Javier de Barcelona and Plácido deCalella 2.3. A wordlist from the early 1970s collected by Trevor R. Allin 3. Bora influence on Resígaro 3.1. Phonological nativization of Bora loans 3.2. Lexical borrowing 3.3. Morphological borrowing 3.4. Structural influence 4. Phonological evidence for time depth of borrowing 5. Bora elements in a wordlist from the 1920s 6. Bora elements in a wordlist from the 1930s 7. Bora elements in a wordlist from the 1970s 8. Summary and conclusion Appendix: Photographs of the newly discoveredwordlists from the 1930s References [Back cover]