SURVEY OF LINGUISTIC VARIATION IN THREE DOMAINS OF THE APURINÃ DIALECTAL COMPLEX (ARAWAK)

Abstract

This work aims to present a survey of the most representative types of linguistic variation attested in the Apurinã language (Arawák) in three domains of the language: phonology, morphology and lexicon. We will discuss the linguistic processes involved in the variation, the direction of the changes and some extralinguistic correlators. We will show that the vowel variations involve vowel raising or vowel syncope, that the consonantal variation involves the glottal fricative deletion and the liquid consonants alternatios, that the morphological variation consists mainly of morphemes with semantically redundant meanings, and that the cases of lexical variation are motivated by a network of semantic relations built from a sociocultural and cognitive system that underlies the phenomenon of the "double vocabulary" in Apurinã.