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Quotative constructions in Karitiana

Authors
  • Luiz Fernando Ferreira orcid logo (Federal University of Roraima)
  • Luciana Storto orcid logo (University of São Paulo)

Abstract

This paper describes quotative constructions in Karitiana such as ‘X said P’. Quotative constructions are complex sentences which are structures that have two or more verbs and a syntactic and/or a semantic embedding between them (van Gijn, Haude & Muysken 2011; Lima & Veenstra 2021). The data analyzed here is taken from two narratives – “Osiip” and “Gokyp” – as well as contextualized elicitation based on quotative questionnaires. The speakers who answered the quotative questionnaires/data elicitation used strategies for quotation which differed from the ones found on the narratives. The most recurrent quotative construction in elicited data is the intransitive verb ’a ‘to do/make’ to convey the meaning ‘to say’. Data from narratives show a pattern in which the reporting verb usually occurs with the quotative prefix iri-. One interesting fact is that quotative constructions are neither direct speech nor indirect speech. Evidence for that is that: (i) the reporting verb is an intransitive verb, (ii) the quotation behaves like a main clause, (iii) switching indexical elements is optional and (iv) these constructions display semantic embedding without syntactic embedding.

Este artigo descreve as construções citativas em Karitiana tais como ‘X disse P’. Construções citativas são estruturas complexas, ou seja, estruturas que possuem dois ou mais verbos e uma subordinação sintática e/ou semântica entre eles (van Gijn, Haude & Muysken 2011; Lima & Veenstra 2021). Os dados analisados aqui foram retirados de duas narrativas, “Osiip” e “Gokyp”, e também são provenientes de elicitação contextualizada de dados baseada em questionários citativos. Os falantes que responderam aos questionários citativos usaram estratégias de citação diferentes daquelas que foram atestadas nas narrativas. A construção citativa mais recorrente nos dados elicitados é o verbo intransitivo ’a ‘fazer’ com sentido de ‘dizer’. Os dados das narrativas mostram um padrão no qual verbos que reportam uma fala geralmente ocorrem com o prefixo citativo iri-. Um fato interessante é que as construções citativas nessa língua não podem ser classificadas nem como discurso direto e nem como discurso indireto. Evidências para isso é que: (i) o verbo citativo é um verbo intransitivo, (ii) a citação se comporta como uma oração matriz, (iii) a mudança de indexicais é opcional e (iv) essas construções possuem subordinação semântica sem subordinação sintática.

Keywords: Amerindian languages, Quotations, Quotative Constructions

How to Cite: Ferreira, L. & Storto, L., (2023) “Quotative constructions in Karitiana”, Language Documentation and Description 23(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.25894/ldd.357

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Published on
15 Feb 2024
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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0

1. Introduction

This paper describes quotative constructions in Karitiana, which is an Indigenous language of the Arikém family (Tupian stock) spoken today by approximately 400 people in Terra Indígena Karitiana and its proximities in the state of Rondônia, Brazil. Quotatives are constructions in which one reports something that another person has uttered, for instance, ‘X said P’. These are considered complex sentences that have syntactic and/or semantic embedding (see Lima & Veenstra 2021; van Gijn, Haude & Muysken 2011).

The data analyzed in this paper comes from two different sources: (i) two narratives collected by Luciana Storto, the manuscript of Osiip ‘male initiation ritual’, and Gokyp ‘the sun’, which was published in Storto et al. (2019) and (ii) contextualized elicitation based on quote construction questionnaires (Aikhenvald 2008; Veenstra, Moore & van der Voort this volume). The first author applied the questionnaires and glossed the data collected, while the second author collected the narratives and translated and glossed the textual data.

When it comes to quotative constructions, languages can have direct speech, which occurs when something is quoted just as one has said it; indirect speech, which occurs when the speakers use their own words; and semi-direct speech which Aikhenvald calls ‘middle-ground’ (see Aikhenvald 2008). According to Aikhenvald, this third kind of speech shows incomplete shifts as illustrated in the Manambu (Ndu family) examples (1) and (2). In (1), a mother of two children (a boy and a girl) tells the son where she hid the things. In this instance, ‘I’ refers to the mother and ‘you two’ refers to the siblings. In (2), the boy tells his sister what his mom has told him and, in this case, there is an incomplete shift since ‘you two’ becomes ‘us two’, but ‘I’ remains ‘I’.

    1. (1)
    1. [ber-a-di
    2. you.du-lk-pl
    1. ja:p
    2. thing
    1. kediya
    2. this.pl.here
    1. taka-tua-di]
    2. put-1sg.subj.p-3pl.subj.p
    1. [ata
    2. then
    1. wa:l]1
    2. say+3fem.sg.obj.p
    1. ‘She said thus: “The things belonging to you two I put here”’      (Aikhenvald 2008: 394)
    1. (2)
    1. [an-a-di
    2. we.two-lk-pl:ind.sp.rep
    1. ja:p
    2. thing
    1. kediya
    2. this.pl.here
    1. taka-tua-di]
    2. put-1sg.subj.p-3pl.subj.p
    1. [ata
    2. then
    1. wa:l]
    2. say+3fem.sg.obj.p
    1. ‘She said thus: “The things belonging to us two I put here”’      (Aikhenvald 2008: 394)

Aikhenvald (2008: 415) assumes that the distinction between direct and indirect speech is irrelevant for many Australian, Uto-Aztecan and Amazonian languages. Our analysis of quotative constructions in Karitiana shows that this language has several constructions to report somebody else’s speech, but despite this vast array of constructions, we claim that the language does not seem to have the direct/indirect speech distinction encoded in its grammar; thus, its structures fall into the category of semi-direct speech proposed by Aikhenvald (2008).

Moreover, the structure of quotations in Karitiana shows that, although there is semantic embedding between the reporting verb and the eventuality being reported, there is no syntactic embedding. All syntactically subordinate clauses in Karitiana lack tense, agreement, and mood morphology. Complement clauses appear without any special morphology, except for the oblique case suffix -ty that may appear depending on the valence of the matrix verb. The sentences of quotative constructions do not follow these patterns. Although the eventuality being reported is semantically a complement of the reporting verb, both verbs are fully inflected for tense and mood, which is an indicator that those verbs are syntactically independent of one another. Thus, in quotative structures, semantic embedding does not result in a syntactic embedded structure.

This paper is organized in four sections. Section 2 presents some facts about tense, aspect, mood, and subordination in Karitiana’s grammar that are important for understanding how subordination works in the language. In Section 3, we present several ways in which the language can report something which was said. Finally, Section 4 presents some final remarks on the structure of quotative constructions in the language.

2. Karitiana’s TAM system

This section briefly presents Karitiana’s tense, aspect, and mood (TAM) system in matrix and subordinate clauses. The basic understanding of Karitiana’s TAM morphology is important because embedded clauses bear neither tense nor mood morphology in the verb, and aspectual auxiliaries are not the same in matrix and subordinate clauses. Therefore, some knowledge on this language’s TAM system helps to determine which is the main clause and which is the subordinate clause in complex structures.

2.1 Tense, aspect, and mood in matrix clauses

Karitiana has a future vs. non-future tense system (Landin 1984; Müller & Ferreira 2020; Storto 1999, 2002, 2013). Tense in this language is marked by a suffix which occurs after the verb root. When the non-future suffix -t (or its allomorphs -Ø/-dn) occurs in a sentence, this sentence is ambiguous between present and past as illustrated in (3). When the future suffix -i (or its allomorph -j) occurs in a sentence, the sentence has a future reading as illustrated in (4).

    1. (3)
    1. João
    2. João
    1. Ø-na-oky-t
    2. 3-decl-kill-nfut
    1. boroja
    2. snake
    1. João kills/killed snakes.
    1. (4)
    1. João
    2. João
    1. Ø-na-oky-j
    2. 3-decl-kill-fut
    1. boroja
    2. snake
    1. João will kill snakes.

Aspectual distinctions are conveyed through post-verbal auxiliaries. Karitiana has different auxiliaries for matrix and subordinate clauses (see Carvalho 2010; Müller & Ferreira 2020; Storto 2002, 2013). In matrix clauses, there is no auxiliary to express perfectiveness, while imperfectiveness is expressed through the auxiliaries tyka (moving), tyso (standing), tysyp (laying down), or tyj̃a (sitting). We assume perfectiveness to be the aspect associated with punctual events, whereas imperfectiveness is the aspect associated with ongoing or habitual events (see Klein 1994). As indicated by the translations, the imperfective auxiliaries convey not only imperfectiveness but also the body position of the subject as illustrated in (5). Also as shown in this example, when there is an aspectual auxiliary in the sentence, it bears tense morphology as well.

    1. (5)
    1. Maria
    2. Maria
    1. Ø-naka-’y
    2. 3-decl-eat
    1. ty-ka/so/syp/j̃a-t
    2. ipfv-moving/standing/laying.down/sitting-nfut
    1. kinda’o
    2. fruit
    1. Maria is eating fruit moving/standing/laying down/sitting.      (Carvalho 2010: 45–46)

Karitiana has a set of mood morphemes responsible for marking the clause type (Ferreira 2017).2 This set is composed by the verbal prefixes na-, pyr-, and iri-, each denoting a different clause type. The prefix na- (and its allomorphs naka-, ta-, and taka-) marks declarative sentences, as illustrated in (3–5); pyr- (and its allomorphs py- and pyry-) marks assertion, as shown by the first verb of (6); and iri- marks quotative constructions, demonstrated by the second verb in (6). Since these only occur in main clauses, it is possible to differentiate embedded clauses from non-embedded clauses by analyzing the morphology of the verb.

    1. (6)
    1. Ø-py-se’a-dn
    2. 3-ass-good-nfut
    1. iri-’a-j
    2. quot-say-fut
    1. Botyj
    2. Botyj
    1. “it’s good” said Botyj      (Storto 2002: 156)

Of those morphemes, the prefix iri- is the most relevant to the present analysis, since it not only allows us to distinguish embedded from non-embedded clauses, but also marks quotative constructions which are the kind of structure focused on this paper. The next section discusses the behavior of subordinate clauses.

2.2 Tense, aspect, and mood in subordinate clauses

In subordinate clauses in Karitiana, verbs occur in final position with respect to the subject and the object. They do not have tense or mood morphology. Aspect is the only functional category present in subordinated clauses, and some aspectual auxiliaries only occur in subordinate clauses. For instance, matrix clauses do not have an auxiliary to express perfectiveness, whereas subordinate clauses use the perfective auxiliary tykiri as illustrated in (7).3

    1. (7)
    1. [boroja
    2. snake
    1. taso
    2. man
    1. oky
    2. kill
    1. tykiri]
    2. pfv
    1. Ø-naka-hyryp-Ø
    2. 3-decl-cry-nfut
    1. õwã
    2. child
    1. [When the man killed the snake], the child cried.      (Storto 1999: 121)

If subordinate clauses lack tense morphology, how is the temporal orientation of such clauses determined? One way is to use aspectual auxiliaries to indicate the temporal orientation (Storto 2013), as in (7). When there is no aspectual auxiliary, the temporal orientation of the subordinate clause is determined by the context. For instance, in (8–9), the event “one woman being a nurse” denoted by the subordinate clause can occur before, after, or concomitant to the utterance time.

    1. (8)
    1. Elivar
    2. Elivar
    1. Ø-na-aka-t
    2. 3-decl-cop-nfut
    1. i-hadna-t
    2. 3-talk-adv
    1. [myhint
    2. one
    1. j̃onso
    2. woman
    1. tyyt
    2. with
    1. enfermeira
    2. nurse
    1. i-aka
    2. 3-cop
    1. tyyt]
    2. with
    1. Elivar talks/talked to a woman who is/was/will be a nurse.
    1. (9)
    1. Elivar
    2. Elivar
    1. Ø-na-aka-j
    2. 3-decl-cop-fut
    1. i-hadna-t
    2. 3-talk-adv
    1. [myhint
    2. one
    1. j̃onso
    2. woman
    1. tyyt
    2. with
    1. enfermeira
    2. nurse
    1. i-aka
    2. 3-cop
    1. tyyt]
    2. with
    1. Elivar will talk to a woman who is/was/will be a nurse.

3. Quotative Structures

This section presents several types of quotative constructions in Karitiana. Reported speech can be expressed through different mechanisms in the language. Sentences with the reportative evidential saryt may be used to report something, as will be shown in section 3.1. Speakers also use the verb ’a, which means ‘to do’, to report a speech act. The quotative construction with this verb is neither direct nor indirect speech, but a middle-ground that will be discussed in Section 3.2. There is also another verb, hadn(a) ‘to talk’, that may introduce quotations, exemplified in Section 3.3. The language also features the quotative prefix iri-, which was introduced in Section 2.1, that will be further explained in Section 3.4.

3.1 Reportative use of evidentialS

In the data from the questionnaires, the indirect evidential was used in rare occasions in a quotative construction. For example, the sentence in (10) was reported in (11) with an evidential. Despite the scarcity of evidentials in the corpus, we note that the consultant made most of the deictic shifts that are expected when a sentence is being reported. For instance, ap (‘there’) becomes haka (‘here’) and yn (‘I’) is shifted to i (‘he’). So, a sentence with the evidential, as (11) shows, seems to work as a reportative version of sentence (10).

Elicitation Context: Suppose a man says Ypyryryt daki yn ap to tell you that he is going to the place where you are. Then you want to report this to another person and say, “he said he would come here”. How would you say that?

    1. (10)
    1. Y-pyr-yryt
    2. 1sg-ass-come
    1. dak-i
    2. refer-fut
    1. yn
    2. 1sg
    1. ap
    2. there
    1. I’ll go there.
    1. (11)
    1. Ø-pyr-yryt
    2. 3-ass-come
    1. saryt
    2. ind.evid
    1. dak-i
    2. refer-fut
    1. i
    2. 3
    1. haka
    2. here
    1. He said that he would come here. (Lit. “He will come here” it was said.)

This is not exclusive to Karitiana. Aikhenvald (2008: 411) mentions that a quotative evidential is one strategy that a language might use to report an act of speech in single clause environments. For example, Jarawara (Arawá family) is a language in which a quotative evidential is used to report an act of speech as illustrated in (12) below.

    1. (12)
    1. IzakiA
    2. Izaki(m)
    1. Nanatobotoo
    2. Nanatoboto(m)
    1. mera
    2. 3.nsg.O
    1. kejehe-mona,
    2. trick-rep.m
    1. Tiokos
    2. Tioko(m)
    1. hi-na-hare-ka
    2. oc-aux(say)-imm.p.firsth.m-decl.m
    1. “Izaki is reported to have tricked Nanatoboto’s people” Tioko said.      (Aikhenvald 2004: 84)

3.2 Reportative use of ‘to do/make’

Another reporting strategy in Karitiana that uses the verb ’a is illustrated in (13). This was the most common strategy for reporting somebody else’s speech used in our elicitation, and it has appeared in other elicitations we have conducted in the past. Therefore, we believe the use of ’a to be the most productive method of reporting someone else’s speech in this language.

    1. (13)
    1. Cizino
    2. Cizino
    1. Ø-na-aka-t
    2. 3-decl-cop-nfut
    1. i-otam-Ø
    2. 3-arrive-adv
    1. Ø-naka-’a-t
    2. 3-decl-do-nfut
    1. Milena
    2. Milena
    1. “Cizino has arrived” Milena said.

There are two features of ’a that we discuss: (i) the verb ’a is a polysemic verb which also means ‘to do/make’ in this language, and (ii) there is a syntactic/semantic mismatch because ’a is an intransitive verb, and therefore what is being reported is a semantic argument without being a syntactic argument. We discuss each of these features below.

3.2.1 When ‘to do’ means ‘to say’

The verb ’a usually means ‘to do/make’ as illustrated in (14). Since it is an intransitive verb, it must be causativized with the morpheme -m in order to have a second argument as illustrated in (14).

    1. (14)
    1. j̃onso
    2. woman
    1. Ø-naka-m-’a-t
    2. 3-decl-caus-do-nfut
    1. café
    2. coffee
    1. The woman made coffee.

This same verb means ‘to say’ whenever it is in a reportative context as illustrated in (13) above. Thus, one possible hypothesis to explain the facts would be to say that there are two homophonous verbs ’a in Karitiana. The first meaning ‘to do’ as illustrated in (15a) and the second meaning ‘to say’ as illustrated in (15b).

    1. (15)
    1. a.
    1. ’a1 = ‘to do’
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. ’a2 = ‘to say’

We might think that an accidental process in the history of this language was responsible for marking these two different verbs resulted in their having the same form. However, this analysis does not seem to be correct. If that was the case, we would observe this phenomenon only in Karitiana or in languages of the Tupian family. However, the exact same phenomenon occurs in languages from other families, such as Australian Aboriginal languages (Merlan 1983; Rumsey 1982). In Ngalakan, the verb yiniñ ‘to do’ can also be used in reportative constructions, as illustrated in (16). The same holds for another Australian Aboriginal language, Ungarinjin, as shown in (17).

    1. (16)
    1. wereka
    2. where
    1. nu-[name]
    2. m-(name)
    1. buru-yiniñ
    2. 3nsg-say.pp
    1. “Where is X?”, they said.      (Merlan 1983: 152)
    1. (17)
    1. gunja
    2. what
    1. budmeri
    2. they.are.saying/they.are.doing
    1. what they are saying/doing.      (Rumsey 1982: 35)

The verb ‘to do’ is also used in reportative contexts in Modern Hebrew (Zuckermann 2006). Thus, the fact that the exact same phenomenon occurs in languages from different families suggests that we are not dealing with an ambiguity caused by accidental homophony, but one single verb which is polysemic as illustrated in (18).

    1. (18)
    1. a.
    1. ’a =
    2.  
    1. ‘to do’ (first meaning)
    2. ‘to say’ (second meaning)

If this fact is common in different languages from different families, there must be something in the semantics of ‘to do’ which makes it a good candidate to be used to report someone else’s speech. We assume that the actions of doing something and of saying something are related following the speech act theory in which utterances are also actions (Austin 1975). When you say something, you are also doing something. In this sense, the semantics of ‘to do’ somehow encompasses the semantics of ‘to say’. Therefore, one could use the broader term to refer to the stricter meaning.

Despite the verb ’a not referring specifically to the “saying” action, it is the most productive reporting strategy. This is puzzling considering that the language has other strategies that specifically refer to a “saying” action. Our analysis is that ‘to do’ is a good candidate to denote a speech act because it can refer not only to the content of the sentence, but to the utterance situation as a whole (the person’s intonation and gestures when he/she says something). That seems to be a correct analysis for the Australian Aboriginal languages Ungarinjin and Ngalakan as described by Merlan (1983: 152):

It’s common in Australian languages for a single verb to be used to mean both ‘to say’ and ‘to do’. This is true also for [the verb ‘say’/‘do’] yini-, which furthermore serves as verbal index to do thus, like that/this, i.e. in the way you are being shown or told about. It may be accompanied by a gesture if it indexes something immediately present in the speech time situation: buru-yini ‘they say/do like this’.

We therefore adopt a similar analysis for Karitiana as the one given by Rumsey and Merlan for the two Australian Aboriginal languages they study, and we believe this may be the correct analysis for other Tupian languages as well, since all Tupian language families have a cognate of this verb that goes back to Proto-Tupi (Galucio et al. 2015; Rodrigues 2005, 2007; Rodrigues & Cabral 2012). The verb ‘to do’ is not the only example of this phenomenon. For instance, the English verb ‘to go’ can also mean ‘to say’ in certain contexts, as illustrated in (19). In this example, the quotative use of verb ‘to go’ in English is accompanied by an imitation of a person’s voice and gestures; this corroborates the analysis that those verbs are being used to refer not only to the content of the utterance, but to the utterance action as a whole.

    1. (19)
    1. And he goes like this: “I won’t enter there!” (imitating the person’s voice and gestures)

3.2.2 The independent interpretation of the clauses

When ’a is interpreted as ‘to say’, it does not seem to take what is being said as a syntactic complement. The first evidence we can give is that this is an intransitive verb, therefore, it only takes one argument. In order to have a second argument, this verb needs to be causativized as previously illustrated in (14). However, when this verb is used in a reporting context, no causativization is necessary, as illustrated in (13).

Apparently, the reason why causativization is not necessary is because what is being reported is not a syntactic argument of the verb. For example, in (13), Cizino naakat iotam ‘Cizino has arrived’ is not an argument for naka’at ‘said’. If it were a syntactic argument, it would be a subordinate clause. However, as we showed in Section 2.2, in this language subordinate clauses do not have tense and mood morphology. Since both verbs appear fully inflected for tense and mood in (13), there is no subordination between them.

A phenomenon that could occur in quotative constructions if there was an embedding relation is “sequence of tense”, as illustrated in (20). In formal semantics, it is assumed that tense refers to a topic time (TopT), the time interval being discussed, occurring previous, after, or concomitant to the utterance time (UT), which is the time interval in which the utterance is made. Therefore, tense anchors a time interval in the utterance time (Klein 1994). However, there are some instances in which this does not seem to be the case. For example, the sentence in (20) can be used in a context in which John said yesterday, “I will buy a fish that is alive”, meaning that the fish must be alive at the time he buys it. This can be reported as in (20), with the verb ‘is’ shifted to ‘was’ in the subordinate clause, but this does not mean that he would buy a fish that was alive in some interval prior to the speaker’s utterance time. Rather, this shift occurs because ‘was’ is in the scope of a higher tense which is also past. In other words, since the tense in the matrix is past tense, the tense in the subordinate is also past tense even though the event described can be interpreted as occuring before or after the utterance time. This phenomenon is called “sequence of tense” (SOT) (see Abusch 1988, 1997; Kratzer 1998; Ogihara 1989, 1994; among others).4

    1. (20)
    1. John said he would buy a fish that was still alive.      (Ogihara 1989)

In order for the SOT to occur, it is necessary for a tense to be in scope of a higher tense. Then, SOT is restricted to languages that have tense in the subordinate environments. In Karitiana quotative constructions, the verbs from both clauses have tense morphemes, but they are interpreted independently from one another, as in (21). Tense in each verb is interpreted according to the context and UT. This is a second argument suggesting that the reporting structure with ’a is formed by two matrix clauses and that the quotation is not syntactically subordinated to the main verb.5 The interpretations in (21a–d) are represented with logical forms representing the events (e) of ‘Milena saying’ (say (e)) and ‘fish being good’ (good (fish, e)) with respect to the utterance time (UT). In each example, logical forms are also translated in English sentences.

    1. (21)
    1. Independent interpretations for sentences in ’a reporting structure
    1. (21a.)
    1. se’a
    2. good
    1. pita-t
    2. very-adv
    1. Ø-na-aka-t
    2. 3-decl-cop-nfut
    1. ’ip
    2. fish
    1. Ø-naka-’a-t
    2. 3-decl-do-nfut
    1. Milena
    2. Milena

Sentence (21a) was selected by speakers in the following contexts:

  1. good(fish, e) = say (e) = UT (the event of the fish being good, the saying event, and the utterance time occur simultaneously)

    ‘Milena says that the fish is very good.’

  2. say(e) < good(fish, e) = UT (the saying event occurs before the event of the fish being good, which is simultaneous to the utterance time)

    ‘Milena said that the fish would be very good (now).’

  3. say(e) = good(fish, e) < UT (the saying event occurs simultaneous to the event of the fish being good, and both occur before the utterance time)

    ‘Milena said that the fish was very good.’

  4. good(fish, e) < say(e) = UT (the event of the fish being good occurs before the saying event, which is simultaneous to the utterance time)

    ‘Milena says that the fish was very good.’

  5. good(fish, e) < say(e) < UT (the event of the fish being good occurs before the saying event, which in turn occurs before the utterance time)

    ‘Milena said that the fish had been very good.’

  6. say(e) < good(fish, e) < UT (the saying event occurs before the event of the fish being good, which in turn occurs before the utterance time)

    ‘Milena said that the fish would be very good (then).’

The interpretations of (21a) show that when both verbs are marked with non-future morphology -t, the event denoted by those verbs are interpreted as being simultaneous or before the utterance time. This shows that non-future tense in those examples is being determined solely by the utterance time and not by a higher tense.

    1. (21b.)
    1. se’a
    2. good
    1. pita-t
    2. very-adv
    1. Ø-na-aka-j
    2. 3-decl-cop-fut
    1. ’ip
    2. fish
    1. Ø-naka-’a-t
    2. 3-decl-do-nfut
    1. Milena
    2. Milena

  1. Sentence (21b) was selected by speakers in the following contexts: say(e) = UT < good(fish, e) (the saying event occurs simultaneously to the utterance time, which in turn occurs before the event of the fish being good)

    ‘Milena says that the fish will be very good’

  2. say(e) < UT < good(fish, e) (the saying event occurs before the utterance time, which in turn occurs before the event of the fish being good)

    ‘Milena said that the fish will be very good.’

The interpretations of (21b) show that when only the copular verb is marked with future morphology -j, the fish being good must be in the future (after the utterance time) whereas the saying event can be either in the present or past (non-future). Again, if there was SOT, we could expect the copular verb to be marked with non-future -t, since it would be under the scope of a higher tense of ’a in the same way it occurs in the English example in (20).

    1. (21c.)
    1. se’a
    2. good
    1. pita-t
    2. very-adv
    1. Ø-na-aka-t
    2. 3-decl-cop-nfut
    1. ’ip
    2. fish
    1. Ø-naka-’a-j
    2. 3-decl-do-fut
    1. Milena
    2. Milena

Sentence (21c) was selected by speakers in the following contexts:

  1. good(fish, e) = UT < say(e) (the event of the fish being good occurs simultaneous to the utterance time, which in turn occurs before the saying event)

    ‘Milena will say that the fish is very good.’

  2. good(fish, e) < UT < say(e) (the event of the fish being good occurs before the utterance time, which in turn occurs before the saying event)

    ‘Milena will say that the fish was very good.’

The interpretations of (21c) show that when the verb ’a is marked by future, the denoted saying event occurs after the utterance time, further illustrating that the verb morphology in both verbs is determined solely by the time to which the verb is anchored, rather than by the utterance time.

    1. (21d.)
    1. se’a
    2. good
    1. pita-t
    2. very-adv
    1. Ø-na-aka-j
    2. 3-decl-cop-fut
    1. ’ip
    2. fish
    1. Ø-naka-’a-j
    2. 3-decl-do-fut
    1. Milena
    2. Milena

Sentence (21d) was selected by speakers in the following contexts:

  1. UT < good(fish, e) = say(e) (the utterance time occurs before the event of the fish being good, which occurs simultaneous to the saying event)

    ‘Milena will say that the fish is very good.’

  2. UT < good(fish, e) < say(e) (the utterance time occurs before the event of the fish being good, which occurs before the saying event)

    ‘Milena will say that the fish will have been very good.’

  3. UT < say(e) < good(fish, e) (the utterance time occurs before the saying event, which occurs before the event of the fish being good)

    ‘Milena will say that the fish will be very good.’

The interpretations of (21d) show that when both verbs are marked with future morphology -j, both events denoted by the verbs must occur after the utterance time. This further illustrates that the verb morphology in both verbs is not determined by a higher tense.

The fact that the clause which reports is not a complement does not necessarily mean they are completely independent syntactically. It is common for verbs in Karitiana which take a semantic complement to be intransitive and for the complement to be introduced in a postpositional phrase which, syntactically, is an adjunct of the verb. One could argue that this is the case for the ’a reporting structure. However, we argue against this analysis in what follows.

3.2.3 PP complements of intransitive verbs

We have seen that the verb ’a is intransitive, and as such, it does not select an embedded clause as its complement. However, there are often structures in Karitiana in which intransitive verbs may have postpositional phrases (PP) as non-obligatory complements. In fact, this is a common strategy for making complex sentence in Karitiana, and they are used in quotation structures as well.

For instance, with the intransitive verb hadn ‘to talk’, note that the postposition tyyt ‘with’ is repeated twice in the examples (22–23). Our interpretation of these structures is that the PP complement of the verb ‘to talk’, in this case, is headed by the postposition ‘with’ that selects as its complement the head-internal relative ‘the woman who is/was/will be a nurse’.

    1. (22)
    1. Elivar
    2. Elivar
    1. Ø-na-aka-t
    2. 3-decl-cop-nfut
    1. i-hadna-t
    2. 3-talk-adv
    1. [myhint
    2. one
    1. j̃onso
    2. woman
    1. tyyt
    2. with
    1. enfermeira
    2. nurse
    1. i-aka
    2. 3-cop
    1. tyyt]
    2. with
    1. Elivar talks/talked to a woman who is/was/will be a nurse.
    1. (23)
    1. Elivar
    2. Elivar
    1. Ø-na-aka-j
    2. 3-decl-cop-fut
    1. i-hadna-t
    2. 3-talk-adv
    1. [myhint
    2. one
    1. j̃onso
    2. woman
    1. tyyt
    2. with
    1. enfermeira
    2. nurse
    1. i-aka
    2. 3-cop
    1. tyyt]
    2. with
    1. Elivar will talk to a woman who is/was/will be a nurse.

Storto, Vivanco & Rocha (2018) explain this type of construction as the extraction of the head of a relative, in (22–23) ‘a woman’, to the left periphery of that relative (‘who is/was/will be a nurse’). The examples are always formed with relatives marked by the oblique postposition -ty as shown in (24–25). Despite the similarities between tyyt and -ty, they are different items. The postposition tyyt is always used to indicate a relationship between two elements, which can be possession or other types of relations roughly translated as ‘with’ in the contexts in which tyyt appears, whereas the oblique -ty marks an extra argument for the verb and does not have a translation.

    1. (24)
    1. Y-py-so’oot-yn
    2. 1sg-ass-see-nfut
    1. yn
    2. 1sg
    1. [taso
    2. man
    1. pikom
    2. monkey
    1. oky]-ty
    2. kill-obl
    1. I saw the man who killed the monkey.
    1. (25)
    1. Y-py-so’oot-yn
    2. 1sg-ass-see-nfut
    1. yn
    2. 1sg
    1. [kinda’o
    2. fruit
    1. Maria
    2. Maria
    1. ti-amang<ã>]-ty
    2. ofc-plant<ev>-obl
    1. I saw the fruit that Maria planted.

The verb so’oot ‘to see’, illustrated in (24–25), is intransitive by all tests and may have a PP complement formed by the oblique postposition and a relative clause. Sentences with oblique relative clauses, such as the above examples, may alternatively be realized with an oblique suffix on the head of the relative co-occurring with the oblique suffix at the end of the clause, as demonstrated in (26):

    1. (26)
    1. Y-py-so’oot-yn
    2. 1sg-ass-see-nfut
    1. yn
    2. 1sg
    1. [[kinda’o]-ty
    2. fruit-obl
    1. Maria
    2. Maria
    1. ti-amang<ã>]-ty
    2. ofc-plant<ev>-obl
    1. I saw the fruit that Maria planted.

One might think that this case is a juxtaposition or conjunction between a phrasal oblique argument (kinda’o) and a clausal oblique argument (Maria tiamangã) with a null object. However, if the juxtaposition or conjunction analysis were correct for Karitiana, the order between the two oblique noun phrases could be exchanged, and this is not the case as shown by the ungrammaticality of (27).

    1. (27)
    1. *Y-py-so’oot-yn
    2.   1sg-ass-see-nfut
    1. yn
    2. 1sg
    1. Maria
    2. Maria
    1. ti-amang<ã>-ty
    2. ofc-plant<ev>-obl
    1. [kinda’o]-ty
    2. fruit-obl
    1.   Intended meaning: I saw the fruit that Maria planted

We therefore propose that (22) and (23) have the same structure as relatives with the oblique postposition seen in (26); that is, they are formed by an intransitive verb which has a postpositional phrase complement in which a relative clause is the complement of the postposition and its head has moved to the beginning of the relative clause accompanied by the postposition.

We will see below that the intransitive verb ’a may introduce quotations or other phrases (ideophones, for instance) in which the quotations or ideophone phrases are not PP complements of the verb.

3.2.4 The intransitive verb ’a may introduce phrases smaller than clauses

The verb ’a can also be used to report on constituents smaller than clauses, as illustrated in (28).

Elicitation context: A jaguar appears in the village. Julenilza is the first person to see it and screams ‘jaguar!’ to warn everybody. But one person does not hear what she screamed and does not understand why everybody is running. So, you say to this person, “Julenilza said, ‘Jaguar!’”.

    1. (28)
    1. Ombaky
    2. jaguar
    1. Ø-naka-’a-t
    2. 3-decl-do-nfut
    1. Julenilza
    2. Julenilza
    1. “Jaguar” Julenilza said.

In a similar way, ideophones or verbal roots can be used as “direct speech” (in fact, “direct enacting”) reported by the verb ’a as illustrated in (29–30).

    1. (29)
    1. Hyryj
    2. sing
    1. hyryj̃
    2. sing
    1. hyryj̃
    2. sing
    1. naka-’a
    2. decl-do
    1. ta’ã-t
    2. dir.evid
    1. y-’it
    2. 1sg-father
    1. [gopo-’obm
    2. wasp.hole
    1. tyso-’oot-a]
    2. ipfv-while-tv
    1. “Sing, sing, sing”: my father did while making a hole in the wasp’s nest.      Osiip narrative (Storto 1996, 2012)
    1. (30)
    1. Tyng
    2. hit
    1. tyng
    2. hit
    1. py͂k
    2. stop
    1. na-m-’a
    2. decl-caus-do
    1. okoo-t
    2. repet-nfut
    1. gopo ’op
    2. wasp hole
    1. “Hit, hit, stop (the axe)” a hole is made again in the wasp’s nest.      Osiip narrative (Storto 1996, 2012)

Both data from our elicitation and from narratives show that the speaker does not need to switch the indexical elements of the sentence. In example (31) there are the indexical elements hak ‘here’, yn ‘I’, and kabm ‘now’. When asked to report this sentence, the speaker used the same indexical elements as illustrated in (32). The same can be observed in data from narratives (33–35).

    1. (31)
    1. Hak
    2. here
    1. y-ta-aka
    2. 1sg-decl-cop
    1. tyka-t
    2. ipfv-nfut
    1. yn
    2. 1sg
    1. kabm
    2. now
    1. I’m here now.
    1. (32)
    1. Julenilza
    2. Julenilza
    1. Ø-naka-’a-t
    2. 3-decl-do-nfut
    1. hak
    2. here
    1. y-ta-aka
    2. 1sg-decl-cop
    1. tyka-t
    2. ipfv-nfut
    1. yn
    2. 1sg
    1. kabm
    2. now
    1. Julenilza said “I’m here now”.
    1. (33)
    1. A-tykiri
    2. that-when
    1. a-oythỹ?
    2. 2sg-heal(intr)
    1. Ø-naka-’a-t
    2. 3-decl-do-nfut
    1. yjxat
    2. 1pl.incl
    1. yj-’it
    2. 1pl-father
    1. Then, “Have you healed?” our father asks us.      Osiip narrative (Storto 1996)
    1. (34)
    1. An
    2. 2sg
    1. i-’y
    2. 3-eat
    1. andyky
    2. refer
    1. him
    2. game
    1. ondyt
    2. big
    1. Ø-naka-’a
    2. 3-decl-do
    1. ta’ã-t
    2. dir.evid-nfut
    1. yn-ty
    2. 1sg-obl
    1. y-’it,
    2. 1sg-father
    1. “You will not be eating big game yet,” my father said.      Osiip narrative (Storto 1996)
    1. (35)
    1. an
    2. you
    1. taka-siibma-j̃,
    2. decl-salt-fut
    1. Ø-naka-’a-t
    2. 3-decl-do-nfut
    1. ta’ãt
    2. dir.evid-nfut
    1. yn-ty
    2. 1sg-obl
    1. y-’it
    2. 1sg-father
    1. … “or you will become salty (retain liquid)” my father said.      Osiip narrative (Storto 1996)

However, the indexical elements may be switched. Our consultants accepted both structures in which indexicals were switched as in (36) and in which they were not switched as in (37):

    1. (36)
    1. Y-kat
    2. 1sg-sleep
    1. hãrãj
    2. well
    1. padni
    2. neg
    1. ka’it
    2. today
    1. dip
    2. night
    1. yn
    2. 1sg
    1. Ø-naka-’a-t
    2. 3-decl-do-nfut
    1. i
    2. 3
    1. Hei said, “Ii didn’t sleep well last night”.
    1. (37)
    1. I-kat
    2. 3-sleep
    1. hãrãj
    2. well
    1. saryty
    2. ind.evid
    1. padni
    2. neg
    1. ka’it
    2. today
    1. dip
    2. night
    1. i
    2. 3
    1. kahyt
    2. so
    1. Ø-naka-’a-t
    2. 3-decl-do-nfut
    1. i
    2. 3
    1. Hei said hei didn’t sleep well last night.

We conclude that reportative constructions with ’a are not direct speech because indexical elements can be switched. However, as the sentences’ interpretation is independent and there is no proper subordination, they are not indirect speech either. Thus, there is no direct/indirect speech difference in Karitiana when the verb ’a is used. The same has been argued for reportative constructions with the verb ‘to do’ in Ngalakan (Merlan 1983) and Ungarinjin (Rumsey 1982).

Syntactically, the phrase introduced by the intransitive verb ’a, which describes what is said or done, is not a direct object of the verb, nor a PP complement, because there is no postposition marking the phrase in any of the cases. However, although there is no syntactic embedding, there must be semantic embedding since they understand that, although it is a main clause, it serves as a semantic complement for the reporting verb ’a. Whenever two clauses are coordinated, for the entire clause to be true, the sentences being coordinated must also be true. For instance, in order for the clause illustrated in (38) to be true, both sentences being coordinated must be true, thus, it must be true that Mary studied linguistics and that Mary works in Maryland.

    1. (38)
    1. Mary studied linguistics, and she works in Maryland.

This is not the case for reporting constructions. Whenever something is reported, the whole clause is true if and only if the uttering event is true. The content of the utterance being false does not impact the truth conditions of the clause. For instance, the clause in (39) is true if and only if there was an event of Mary saying that she works in Maryland. If she does not work in Maryland, in other words, if she is lying, it does not change the fact that she has said she worked in Maryland, and therefore the clause in (39) is still true.

    1. (39)
    1. Mary said that she works in Maryland.

This happens because what is being reported is not evaluated independently, but in the scope of the reporting verb. Therefore, although there is no syntactic embedding in ’a constructions, there must be semantic embedding because the fact that someone said something does not necessarily entail that what was said is true.

3.3 Reportative use of ‘to talk’

Another verb that can be used as reportative in Karitiana is hadn ‘to talk’. This is another intransitive verb used in two contexts: one in which a person is talking to someone, and another in which something is being said. In the first case, there is syntactic embedding and the addressee is introduced as a PP complement, as discussed in 3.2.3. This is exemplified in (40).

    1. (40)
    1. Elivar
    2. Elivar
    1. Ø-na-aka-t
    2. 3-decl-cop-nfut
    1. i-hadna-t
    2. 3-talk-adv
    1. [myhint
    2. one
    1. j̃onso
    2. woman
    1. tyyt
    2. with
    1. enfermeira
    2. nurse
    1. i-aka
    2. 3-cop
    1. tyyt]
    2. with
    1. Elivar talks/talked to a woman who is/was/will be a nurse.

When this verb means ‘to say’, it behaves similarly to ’a. Both verbs appear fully inflected for mood and tense, there is no syntactic embedding, and the quotation is not introduced as a PP complement. This is exemplified in (41–42).

    1. (41)
    1. Milena
    2. Milena
    1. Ø-na-aka-t
    2. 3-decl-cop-nfut
    1. i-hadna-t
    2. 3-talk-adv
    1. Porto
    2. Porto
    1. Velho
    2. Velho
    1. pip
    2. in
    1. yn
    2. 1sg
    1. ta-aka
    2. decl-cop
    1. tyka-t
    2. ipfv-nfut
    1. yn
    2. 1sg
    1. i-’a-t
    2. 3-do-adv
    1. Milena said, “I am in Porto Velho”.
    1. (42)
    1. A-tykiri
    2. that-when
    1. Ø-na-m-’y-t
    2. 3-decl-caus-pass-nfut
    1. keerep
    2. in.the.old.days
    1. Osiip
    2. Osiip
    1. Ø-naka-hadn
    2. 3-decl-talk
    1. ta’ãt-Ø
    2. dir.evid-nfut
    1. yn-ty
    2. 1sg-obl
    1. y-’it
    2. 1sg-father
    1. “Then, because of that, it was a habit to go through the Osiip ritual in the old days,” my father said to me.      Osiip narrative (Storto 1996)

In (41–42) the quoted sentence behaves like a matrix sentence being fully inflected for tense/mood. In (42), there is an oblique phrase of the verb hadn(a) expressed translated as ‘to me’ which does not refer to the quotation but to the goal of the saying event.

3.4 Quotative MARKING WITH mood

The mood prefix iri-, analyzed as quotative (citativo in Portuguese) mood by Storto (2002), can be used with ‘to do/say’ and ‘to think’. The verb in this mood is always followed by a marker of future tense (Storto 1999, 2002), as in (43) and (44).

    1. (43)
    1. Morã-song
    2. wh-for
    1. kahyt
    2. like.this
    1. i-’a-t
    2. 3-do-nfut
    1. iri-kãra-j̃
    2. quot-think-fut
    1. Then, they thought “it was like this that they would do.”      Gokyp Narrative (Storto et al. 2019: 436)
    1. (44)
    1. Uh
    2. interj
    1. ti-’a
    2. ofc-do
    1. tyka
    2. ipfv
    1. hỹ
    2. interr
    1. iri-’a-j
    2. quot-do/say-fut
    1. taso
    2. man
    1. “Uh, what is going on?” said the men.      Gokyp Narrative (Stortoet al. 2019: 434)

Syntactically, the quotation introduced by a verb in the quotative mood may be a phrase as in (45) or a clause as in (46) and (47). Furthermore, it can be a clause which is a PP complement of the verb marked by the oblique postposition as in (48) and (49).

    1. (45)
    1. Syryyp
    2. ideoph.fall.spread
    1. iri-’a-j
    2. quot-do/say-fut
    1. taso
    2. man
    1. “Fall spreading” the men did.      Gokyp Narrative (Storto et al. 2019: 440)
    1. (46)
    1. Yjxa
    2. people
    1. pita-t
    2. real-adv
    1. i-’a
    2. 3-do
    1. tyka-t
    2. ipfv-nfut
    1. iri-kãra-j̃
    2. quot-think-fut
    1. They thought “he was human.”      Gokyp Narrative (Storto et al. 2019: 436)
    1. (47)
    1. Morã-song
    2. wh-for
    1. Ø-naka-kãrã-t
    2. 3-decl-think-nfut
    1. taso
    2. man
    1. i-a-oky
    2. 3-pass-kill
    1. padni
    2. neg
    1. Gokyp
    2. sun
    1. At that moment the men thought: “The sun cannot be killed”.      Gokyp Narrative (Storto et al. 2019: 436)
    1. (48)
    1. Morã-song
    2. Wh-for
    1. Ø-na-aka-t
    2. 3-decl-cop-nfut
    1. okyp
    2. hot
    1. okyp
    2. hot
    1. pywyti-<y>ty
    2. strong-<ev>obl
    1. tat
    2. go
    1. iri-’a-j
    2. quot-do/say-fut
    1. “His heat was becoming increasingly intense” then they say.      Gokyp Narrative (Stortoet al. 2019: 433)
    1. (49)
    1. Ta-sooj-o
    2. 3.anaph-wife-emph
    1. tat-<a>t
    2. go-<ev>obl
    1. iri-kãra-j̃
    2. quot-think-fut
    1. Botyj̃
    2. Botyj̃
    1. “That his wife left him” Botyj̃ thought.      Gokyp Narrative (Storto et al. 2019)

The quotative mood strategy seems to be equivalent to the other reported speech strategies seen so far; that is, it is a middle-ground approach being neither direct nor indirect speech. The quotative morpheme iri- was only present in data from narratives and it did not appear in any sentence collected through questionnaires during data elicitation. In Karitiana society, only a few people are considered adequate for telling the narratives, usually the elders from the community. On the other hand, the data elicitation was conducted with consultants who are younger. Therefore, our hypothesis is that the difference attested in the data from narratives are due either to stylistic variation or to language change.

3.5 Summary

This paper analyzes quotative constructions in Karitiana. There are many structures that a speaker might use in this language to report someone else’s speech. In our corpora, the evidential saryt was used to report someone else’s speech, but that was a marginal use (Section 3.1). We also describe the quotative morpheme iri- that is very productive in narratives but did not appear in our elicitations (Section 3.4). We found the most common strategies for reporting someone else’s speech were the structure involving the verb ’a ‘to say’/‘to do’ (Section 3.2) followed by the structure using the verb hadn ‘to talk’/‘to say’ (Section 3.3).

It seems that there is no direct/indirect speech distinction in Karitiana. We have shown that ’a and hadn are intransitive verbs and that the content of what is being said works syntactically as an independent clause fully inflected for tense and mood. However, there is still a semantic dependence between them, since what is being reported is interpreted as being in the scope of the verb; in other words, semantic embedding is not necessarily encoded by syntactic embedding. One possibility is that other elements are being used to indicate the semantic dependence of the clauses, such as a different prosody when you start to imitate people’s voice when reporting their speech, but we have not yet tested that and leave it to future research. Maybe those facts are related because in order to have indirect speech, some degree of embedding would be necessary; since there is no syntactic embedding, indirect speech is not a possibility.

4. Final Remarks

Although there is still much to be explained about Karitiana quotatives, these types of complex sentences have been described in some syntactic detail for the first time. The paper dealt first with different ways in which Karitiana can express quotations, and we have shown that indirect evidentials (hearsay) can work as reportatives. Furthermore, the intransitive verb hadn(a), meaning ‘to talk’, may be used to introduce quotations, and there is also a quotative morpheme found only in narratives with the same function. The main discoveries we have made with respect to this theme, however, are that there is no proper verb ‘to say’ in Karitiana, and that the intransitive verb ’a is used in the language to mean ‘to do’—which includes ‘to say’—and that it introduces semi-direct speech. In fact, we have seen that the ‘to talk’ verb and quotative mood strategies may also introduce direct or reported speech. It is shown that the ’a verb does not have a direct object and is thus intransitive. The verb hadn when it means ‘to talk’ may appear with a PP complement, which introduces the goal of the saying event, but there is no subordination when it introduces a quotation.

The lack of the direct/indirect distinction might come from the fact that indirect speech needs some degree of embedding and our analysis has shown that there is no syntactic embedding between the reporting verb and what is being reported, only semantic embedding. Thus, Karitiana quotatives are complex constructions that show that semantic embedding does not need to be encoded by syntactic embedding. How exactly semantic embedding is encoded in those sentences is a topic we leave for future research.

Notes

  1. Data transcription is orthographic, where y= [ɨ]; j and j̃ are oral and nasal allophones, respectively, of the palato-alveolar nasal; and long vowels are represented by two vowels of the same quality in a row. The references for data from other papers are presented after each example. Data without a reference was elicited for this paper. The abbreviations used here are the following: 1 first person; 2 second person; 3 third person; adv adverbializer; anaph anaphora; ass assertive mood; aux auxiliary; caus causative; cop copula; decl declarative mood; dir direct; du dual; emph emphatic; ev epenthetic vowel; evid evidential; fem feminine; firsth firsthand; fut future; ideoph ideophone; imm.p immediate past; incl inclusive; ind indirect; interj interjection; interr interrogative; intr intransitive; ipfv imperfective aspect; lk linker; m masculine; n non-; neg negation; o transitive object function; obj object marker; obl oblique; oc marker of o-construction type; ofc object focus construction; p past; pass passive voice; pfv perfective aspect; pl plural; pp past punctual; quot quotative mood; refer referential aspect; rep reported; repet repetitive; sg singular; subj subject cross-referencing set; tv thematic vowel; wh wh-word. Epenthetic vowels appear between angled brackets <>. [^]
  2. There is a second set of mood morphemes responsible for conveying modality which will not be discussed in this paper. An overview of the modal system can be found in Ferreira (2017). [^]
  3. The language has many auxiliaries which cannot all be discussed here due to space limitations. An overview of the aspectual system can be found in Carvalho (2010), Müller & Ferreira (2020), and Storto (2013). [^]
  4. There are different theories to explain the SOT phenomenon. The relevant aspect for this analysis is that it occurs when one tense is inside the scope of another syntactically. [^]
  5. The readings were collected by the second author in a field experiment. In order to collect the appropriate readings, the four sentences (21a), (21b), (21c) and (21d) were presented in written form in four slips of paper in a table in front of the speaker. After that, each possible reading was presented orally to the consultant as a context. For example, the reading (i) in (21a) was presented orally to the consultant as “Imagine you are at a party, and there is fish. You haven’t tried the fish, but Milena did. You ask her how the fish is, and she says that it is good. Then, another person asks you how the fish is, and you say ‘Milena says that the fish is good’.” After this presentation, the consultant was instructed to pick the slip(s) of paper from the table with the sentence that could be used in the context which had just been narrated to them. Since the target sentences were written on slips of paper, we worked with the consultants who could read well for this elicitation. [^]

Acknowledgements

First of all, we would like to thank all Karitiana speakers. Without them, the research reported here would not be possible. We would also like to thank Suzi Lima and Tonjes Veenstra for organizing the workshop Speech and Attitude Reports in Brazilian Languages and for their valuable comments on previous drafts of this paper. The development of the ideas presented in this article has benefited greatly from discussions with Kai von Fintel. Lastly, we would like to thank the comments and insights of the audience of the workshop Speech and Attitude Reports in Brazilian Languages and Kolloquium Syntax und Semantik at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where this research was presented. Naturally, the authors are the only ones responsible for any mistakes that remain.

Funding Information

The first author acknowledges the grant CNPq (142209/2017-1) received in Brazil, CAPES (88887.370125/2019-00) received in the United States, and a travel grant received from the COSY-Project (DFG-GZ: SA 925/14-1), Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenshaft Berlin, to elicit data with native speakers that resulted in this paper. The second author acknowledges the grant CNPq (304223/2020-4) received in Brazil and the grant FAPESP (2020/01759-4) received to fund a period abroad.

Competing Interests

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

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