Reference marking in the ache (tupi-guarani)

Abstract

The objective of this paper consists in making a first approximation of some of the devices for tracking reference in the ache, a language of the tupi-guarani linguistic family. Primary and secondary data was used to make this research. In the first place, we are going to do a qualitative analysis of the resources utilized to track the reference in an ache narrative, picked up by the missionary linguistic Ruth Sammons in 1976, when the language presented still a situation of high vitality. This analysis was complemented with data obtained in my fieldwork, in the Ache community of Cerro Morotí (Caaguazú, Paraguay).

Ache presents many differences with other languages within the family. Among those differences, this variety stands out for being unable to mark the core arguments in the verbs, as happens with the other languages of this subgroup. Considering this ache feature, we propose as hypothesis that the speakers are going to prioritize in their speeches low accessibility markers instead of high accessibility ones, without considering the cognitive status that such referent had in the speaker’s mind and the distance between their mentions.