Aspects of the relationship between noun incorporation and valency in Asuriní do Xingu

Abstract

In this article we aim to discuss how noun incorporation affects valency in the Asuriní language of the Xingu (Tupí-Guaraní). We show that it can act as a grammatical strategy that decreases verbal valency, which is in accordance with the syntactic properties that are predicted by the linguistic typology. Moreover, we note that it may not affect verb valency, since a construction can maintain its valency, even after the noun incorporation process, although there is a change in the function of the semantic-syntactic roles, reflecting the rearrangement on the sentence structure. We argue that the change or maintenance of valency in the sentence is related to the nature of the verb, the nature of the incorporated noun, and the grammatical role that the incorporated noun occupies in the sentence before it is incorporated into the verb stem. Furthermore, in the article, we also discuss the performance of other valency adjustment mechanisms in derived verbs through the noun incorporation process.