Case in Wounan: the alignment system and the relationship between case markers and semantic roles

• Main Authors: Adriana Arboleda, Marianne Dieck
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad del Valle 2018-01-01
• Series: Lenguaje
• Subjects: wounan; case; alignment; ergativity;semantic roles.
• Online Access: http://revistalenguaje.univalle.edu.co/index.php/lenguaje/article/view/6255/10122

This article explores the case alignment system in the Amerindian language Wounan and the relationship between its case markers and semantic roles. With a database compiled from extensive fieldwork and within the framework of descriptive linguistics and typology, the article proposes that Wounan has ergative/absolutive-experiencer split-ergativity patterns. Some of Wounan’s grammatical case markers are asymmetrical to its semantic roles. Nonetheless,the syntactic and semantic contexts that determine a clear interpretation of the expressed semantic roles are coherent and systematic, therefore this asymmetry between form and function in these cases is not arbitrary.