Fri, February 27, 2026
3:55 pm - 5:15 pm
Oxley 103
Recursive nominalization and verbalization in the morphology of Tuparí, an Indigenous Brazilian language
In earlier research (Singerman 2018a) I described and analyzed the typologically unusual system of nominal negation that exists in Tuparí, a Tupían language of Brazil. In this talk I revisit that system in order to illustrate a broader — and in my view more interesting — property of this language's morphology: its fundamentally recursive nature. I show that the category-changing processes of deverbal nominalization and denominal verbalization feed one another, often multiple times within a single word or phrase. I illustrate this recursion using previously unpublished data on loanword incorporation and scopal alternations, which I gathered during recent fieldwork. The data and analysis I present in this talk are part of a larger book project which examines the ubiquity of recursive structure in Tuparí morphology and syntax. In keeping with my broader commitment, grounded in documentary linguistics, to report how Tuparí speakers can and do use their language, conversational and textual data are prioritized in this presentation and in the book project.