Reviewed by Patrycja Jablonska, Wroclaw University, Sweden
This book is the first comprehensive description of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Baure, an endangered South-Arawak language spoken in Bolivia. Baure shares many features of other Amazonian languages, such as a scarcity of round vowels and liquids, polysynthesis, an extensive classifier system, and incorporation.
In Ch. 1 (1–32), Swintha Danielsen presents the historical and linguistic context of the language. In Ch. 2 (33–81), D details Baure’s phonemic inventory, phonotactics, and segmental and morphophonological processes. Additionally, D discusses phonological words and phrases.
Morphology is examined in Ch. 3 (83–110). Although predominantly a suffixing language, Baure contains causative, privative, and attributive prefixes as well as a paradigm of argument-marking personal clitics. D contrasts Baure’s valency-affecting (e.g. causative, benefactive, absolute) and aspectual (e.g. departitive, change of state, repetitive) affixes.
In Ch. 4 (111–71), D explores nouns and adjectives. Baure nouns can be obligatorily possessed, optionally possessed, or nonpossessable. Adjectives also fall into three classes: right-bound roots augmented by a classifier, absolute adjectives, and derived adjectives.
Predicate structure is the topic of Ch. 5 (173–216). D surveys verbal and nonverbal predicates as well as equative, attributive, existential, locative, and privative constructions. Additionally, she describes three types of nominalizations, three ways to express possession, and two types of incorporation.
Ch. 6 (217–68) is devoted to the intricacies of Baure’s polysynthetic verbs, which contain affixes that mark valency, aspect, and modality but not tense. Several tables illustrate cooccurrence restrictions.
Preverbal particles that mark intention, repetition, termination, immediacy, certainty, and the progressive are discussed in Ch. 7 (269–99). Closed word classes, such as adverbs, determiners, pronouns, and interjections are examined in Ch. 8 (301–29).
Ch. 9 (331–79) investigates clause-level phenomena such as word order, negations, imperative and interrogative clauses, clausal enclitics, and conversation strategies. Finally, in Ch. 10 (381–430), D describes strategies for clause combining, including coordination by various connectors, relative clauses, marked subordination, predicate chaining, and serial verb constructions.
D has produced an invaluable contribution to the Arawak linguistic literature. Her meticulously documented data will be of use to both typologists and theoretical linguists.