A ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR DESCRIPTION OF TUPINAMBÁ

Tupinambá is the first attested language of the Tupí-Guaraní family and it has a story that one can follow from its first attestation to the present through its descendants. Making use of RRG, a linguistic theory that is informed by cross-linguistic diversity, I present the first typologically adequate description of Tupinambá. This description introduces the main aspects of Tupinambá grammar, including phonology, morphology, syntax, and information structure, accounting for the interface between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. »This is the first comprehensive description of Tupinambá. The language was spoken on great parts of the Atlantic coast of Brazil when Jesuits, since the middle of the 16th century, began to use it for mission. In the forming of Brazil as an independent nation, Tupinambá became a national symbol: Nearly all the endemic Brazilian fauna and flora has Tupinambá names. It is present until now in lots of names of streets, place-names and geographical names, meals, fruits, first names of persons, and popular expressions in Brazilian Portuguese. In spite of being a natural element in Brazilian life and although there have been partial descriptions in early and also in modern times, Tupinambá never has been the object of a comprehensive syntax, morphology, and phonology. Fabrício Ferraz Gerardi presents us with a convincing modern linguistic analysis on the basis of a corpus of texts written by missionaries of the 16th and 17th centuries. All we know about Tupinambá language is from Jesuit missionaries (catechisms, grammars, theater, poetry). This book stands for a significant advance not only in the analysis of Tupinambá syntactic structure but even in our understanding of how function the numerous languages of the whole linguistic family called Tupi-Guarani. This is a very important contribution to the linguistics of the languages of Brazil.« Prof. Dr. Wolf Dietrich