Syntactic complexity and grammaticalization in Toba language (Guaycuruan)

This chapter analyzes phasal, modal and verbs of motion which, in Toba language (Guaycuruan family), have grammaticalized starting from two types of constructions: completive clauses with phasal and modal verbs, and serial verb constructions (SVCs) with motion verbs. In the domain of phasal and modal completive clauses, the process of grammaticalization involves a change of the grammatical status of the phasal or modal verb. The verb loses the agreement person marker, a common process in other domains of the language. This change constitutes the sole evidence of the co-evolution of form and meaning. In this domain, phasal verbs develop into either aspectual auxiliaries (inceptive or resultative) or as words with a prepositional function. The latter is the only conventionalized strategy that Toba has to express what is encoded through adpositions in other languages. In serial verb constructions (SVCs) with motion verbs, these cover a wide range of meanings of meanings associated with movement (direction, path, location, etc.). In such contexts, one of the verbs, the directional verb is grammaticalized as progressive aspect auxiliary, while the second verb, the locative weta does so to a durative aspect auxiliary. Thus, serial verb constructions with motion verbs also explain the origin of directional and locative suffixes from verbs. The synchronic coexistence of serial and complex verb constructions with an identical function favors the argument of different diachronic paths of grammaticalization within languages for which no historical documents are available as Toba.