Cover not available

In:Word Formation in South American Languages
Edited by Swintha Danielsen, Katja Hannss and Fernando Zúñiga
[Studies in Language Companion Series 163] 2014
► pp. 51–77

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Augmentative in Toba (Guaycuruan)

Form and function

 | University of Buenos Aires, CONICET
Published online: 14 November 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.163.04cun
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the morphosyntactic and semantic aspects of the augmentative forms in the Toba language (Guaycuruan family), spoken in the Gran Chaco region (Argentina). The study of the forms linked to the notion of augmentative in this language comprises both derivational morphology and nominal composition, and embodies a great range of meanings from ‘big size’, ‘abundance’, ‘intensity’ or ‘affection’ to the (generally pejorative) notions of ‘excess’ or ‘mockery’. Augmentative forms also play a role as a source of lexical creation and as a nominal categorization device. Furthermore, in the ethnobiological lexicon, they constitute a preferred means in word formation for naming animals and plants, and they code meanings such as ‘hierarchy’ (‘more dangerous’ or ‘with outstanding qualities’) or ‘anomaly’ (‘stranger/ unknown/ unusual’). Keywords: Toba; Guaycuruan; augmentative; evaluative morphology; kinship compounds
References (52)
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra. 2007. Typological distinctions in word-formation. In Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon, 2nd edn, Timothy Shopen (ed), 1–65. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 2004. A glossary of morphology. Edinburgh: EUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1996. No phonetic iconicity in evaluative morphology. Studia Linguistica 50: 189–206. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beck, David. 2008. Ideophones, adverbs, and predicate qualification in Upper Nexaca Totonac. International Journal of American Linguistics 74(1): 1–46. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Buckwalter, Alberto. 2001 [1980]. Vocabulario toba, rev. edn. Formosa IN: Equipo Menonita – Mennonite Board of Missions.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carpio, María Belén. 2007. Sistemas de alineación en toba (familia guaycurú, Argentina). MA thesis, Universidad de Sonora, Hermosillo, México.
Censabella, Marisa. 2002. Descripción funcional de un corpus en lengua toba (Familia Guaycurú, Argentina). Sistema fonológico, clases sintácticas y derivación. Aspectos de sincronía dinámica. PhD dissertation, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba.
. 2005. Nominalización deverbativa en toba. Revista Anclajes 9(9): 189–211. Universidad Nacional de La Pampa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Corbera Mori, Ángel H. 2002. Morfología apreciativa: aspectos contrastivos entre aguaruna y castellano. In Contribuciones a la lingüística aplicada en América Latina, Carmen Curcó (ed), 295–306. México DF: UNAM, Centro de Enseñanza de Lenguas Extranjeras.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1998. Morfologia avaliativa: Diminutivos e aumentativos em Aguaruna (Jívaro). In Proceedings of the XLVI Seminário do GEL, Vol. I: 134–134. São José do Rio Preto, São Paolo, Brazil.
Cúneo, Paola. 2012. Términos especializados en la composición de nombres etnobiológicos en toba (guaycurú). Revista UniverSOS: Revista de Lenguas Indígenas y Universos Culturales 9, 133–146. Universitat de València.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. Formación de palabras y clasificación nominal en el léxico etnobiológico en toba (guaycurú). Lincom Studies in Native American Linguistics 68. Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cúneo, Paola, Dante, Patricia & Tacconi, Temis. 2009. Tipología léxica. Una aproximación a dos lenguas chaqueñas: Toba (guaycurú) y maká (mataguaya). Cadernos de Etnolingüística 1(2). [URL] (9 February 2014)Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Di Garbo, Francesca. 2011. Evaluative morphology in noun phrases: a typological study. Paper presented at Third Conference of the Scandinavian Association for Language and Cognition (SALC III), Copenhagen, June 14–16.
Ettinger, Stefan. 1974. Diminutiv- und Augmentativbildung: Regeln und Restriktionen. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grandi, Nicola. 2002. Morfologie in contatto: Le costruzioni valutative nelle lingue del Mediterraneo. Milano: Franco Angeli.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. Sardinian evaluative morphology in typological perspective. In Sardinian in typological perspective, Ignazio Putzu (ed), 188–209. Bochum: Universitätsverlag Brockmeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. Restrictions on Italian verbal evaluative suffixes: the role of aspect and actionality. York Papers in Linguistics Series 2: 46–66. YEMM Special issue.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. Renewal and innovation in the emergence of Indo-European evaluative morphology. In Diminutives and Augmentatives in the Languages of the World. Lexis 6: 5–25. [URL] (9 February 2014).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grandi, Nicola & Montermini, Fabio. 2005. Prefix-suffix neutrality in evaluative morphology. In Morphology and Linguistic Typology. On-line Proceedings of the Fourth Mediterranean Morphology Meeting (MMM4) Catania, September 21–23 2003, University of Bologna, Geert Booij, Emiliano Guevara, Angela Ralli, Salvatore Sgroi & Sergio Scalise (eds), 143–156. [URL] (9 February 2014)
Gregová, Renáta, Körtvélyessy, Lívia & Zimmermann, Július. 2010. Phonetic iconicity in the evaluative morphology of a sample of Indo-European, Niger-Congo and Austronesian languages. Word Structure 3(2): 156–180. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gualdieri, Beatriz. 1998. Mocoví (Guaycurú). Fonologia y morfossintaxe. PhD dissertation, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, San Pablo.
. 2006. Clasificadores guaycurúes: Un desafío para la lingüística. Paper presented at Actas del I Encuentro de Lenguas Indígenas Americanas (ELIA), Santa Rosa, La Pampa, june 15–17.
Hecht, Ana Carolina. 2010. Todavía no se hallaron hablar en idioma: Procesos de socialización lingüística de los niños en el barrio toba de Derqui, Argentina [Lincom Studies in Sociolinguistics 9]. Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd & Kuteva, Tania. 2002. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hinton, Leanne, Nichols, Johanna & Ohala, John (eds). 1994. Sound Symbolism. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jurafsky, Daniel. 1996. Universals tendencies in the semantics of the diminutive. Language 72: 533–78. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klein, Harriet. 1978. Una gramática de la lengua toba: Morfología verbal y nominal. Montevideo: Universidad de la República.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Konstanz Universals Archive. 1998–2009. Universität Konstanz, Frans Plank Archivist General. At: [URL] (17 February 2012)
Körtvélyessy, Lívia. 2011. A cross-linguistic research into phonetic iconicity. In Diminutives and Augmentatives in the Languages of the World. Lexis 6: 27–39. [URL] (9 February 2014)Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Körtvélyessy, Lívia & Štekauer, Pavol (eds). 2011. Diminutives and Augmentatives in the Languages of the World. Lexis 6. [URL] (9 February 2014)Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martínez, Gustavo. 2009. Fitonimia de los tobas bermejeños (Chaco Central, Argentina). In Hacia una nueva carta étnica del Gran Chaco, José Braunstein & Cristina Messineo (eds), 194–212. Buenos Aires: Centro del Hombre Antiguo Chaqueño.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martínez Crovetto, Raúl. 1995. Zoonimia y etnozoología de los pilagá, toba, mocoví, mataco y vilela, Pedro Viegas Barros (ed). Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires.
Matisoff, James A. 1992. The mother of all morphemes: Augmentatives and diminutives in a real and universal perspective. In Papers from the First Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, Martha Ratliff & Eric Schiller (eds), 293–349. Tempe AZ: Arizona State University, Program for Southeast Asian Studies.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Medrano, Celeste. 2012. Zoo-sociología qom: de cómo los tobas y los animales trazan sus relaciones en el Gran Chaco. PhD dissertation, Universidad de Buenos Aires.
Medrano, Celeste, Maidana, Mauricio & Gómez, Cirilo. 2011. Zoología Qom: Conocimientos tobas sobre el mundo animal [Serie Naturaleza, Conservación y Sociedad 3]. Santa Fe (Argentina): Ediciones Biológica.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Messineo, Cristina. 2003. Lengua toba (guaycurú). Aspectos gramaticales y discursivos. Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. Entre nombres y verbos. Categorización de los “conceptos de propiedad” en toba. In Estudios en Lingüística y Antropología. Homenaje a Ana Gerzenstein, Cristina Messineo, Marisa Malvestitti & Roberto Bein (eds), 157–166. Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Messineo, Cristina & Cúneo, Paola. 2011. Ethnobiological classification in two indigenous languages of the Gran Chaco Region: Toba (Guaycuruan) and Maká (Mataco-Mataguayan). Anthropological Linguistics 53(2): 132–169. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, Elmer. 1979. Los tobas argentinos. Armonía y disonancia en una sociedad. Ciudad de México: Siglo XXI.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mithun, Marianne. 1999. The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1980. Bantu class prefixes: Inflectional or derivational?  Papers from the annual regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 16: 246–258.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nieuwenhuis, Paul. 1985. Diminutives. PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh.
Payne, Thomas. 1997. Describing Morphosyntax. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scalise, Sergio. 1986. Generative Morphology. Dordrecht: Foris. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scarpa, Gustavo. 2010. Hacia una etnotaxonomía vegetal chorote II: Clasificación de las plantas entre las parcialidades iyojwá’ja y iyowújwa del Chaco argentino. In Léxico y categorización etnobiológica en grupos indígenas del Gran Chaco, Cristina Messineo, Gustavo F. Scarpa & Florencia Tola (eds), 157–198. Santa Rosa: Universidad Nacional de La Pampa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stump, Gregory. 1993. How peculiar is evaluative morphology? Linguistics Faculty Publications, Paper 28. [URL] (9 February 2014)
Tola, Florencia. 2010. Maîtres, chamanes et amants. In Ateliers du LESC [Société d’Ethnologie de Nanterre 34], Valentina Vapnarsky & Aurore Monod Becquelin (eds). [URL] (9 February 2014)
Vidal, Alejandra. 1997. Noun classification in Pilagá (Guaykuruan). Journal of Amazonian Languages 1(1): 58–111.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wright, Pablo. 1992. Dream, shamanism, and power among the toba of Formosa Province. In Portal of ower: Shamanism in South America, Jean Langdon & Gerard Baen (eds), 149–172. Albuquerque NM: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. Cosmografías. Etnografías Contemporáneas 1(1): 173–210.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Sánchez, Mayra Julieta
2025. Estudio comparativo de los mecanismos de expresión del diminutivo en Qom y Pilagá (Guaycurú). RASAL Lingüística ► pp. 63 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue