draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

2.2.3.1.4 Irrealis =mia Synchronically, the VP-final enclitic =mia irr appears in a number of
construction types, all of which may be considered notionally irrealis. It encodes deontic modality,
appears in the apodosis of counterfactual conditionals and may indicate that a given state of affairs
is hypothetical in nature. It is the only morpheme that occurs in the final clitic position in Table
2.6. Only the counterfactual use is attested in Old Omagua, as in (2.16). 46
(2.16) m1t1R1pe 1p1sasui comulgayaRayakatu maRai kuRataRaSi, nuamai utSaya[Ra]RaSi, Ranasawaitimia
santísimo sacramento?
m1t1R1pe 1p1sa =sui comulga =yaRa =ya =katu maRai kuRata
in.middle.of night =abl receive.communion =poss.nomz =sim =intsf thing drink
=RaSi nua =mai utSa =yaRa =RaSi Rana= sawaiti =mia
=nass be.big =inact.nomz sin =poss.nomz =nass 3pl.ms= encounter =irr
santísimo sacramento
Holy Sacrament
‘Drinking in the middle of the night like a communicant, but being a great sinner, would
they receive the Holy Sacrament?’
(example (6.32a))
This morpheme can be reconstructed to Proto-Omagua-Kokama, and has cognates in what have
been analyzed as frustratives across the Tupí-Guaraní family (e.g., Tupinambá Biã and Wayampí
mijã (Jensen 1998:538-539)), which is expected, given that both frustratives and irrealis markers
encode unrealized states of affairs. 47 While no frustrative function can be reconstructed for
Proto-Omagua-Kokama *=mia, it is not clear that the Proto-Tupí-Guaraní form did not have
broader functions in encoding irrealis modality generally, in which case the Proto-Omagua-Kokama
form simply reflects an older functional distribution. This analysis goes against (Cabral 1995:271),
who argues that POK *=mia originates from Proto-Arawak *-mi (citing Payne (1993)). No other
grammatical morphemes have been definitively shown to be of Arawak origin, and explaining the
phonological shape of Proto-Omagua-Kokama *=mia assuming an Arawak origin is problematic,
namely because of the presence of a final a (see footnote (47)). That *=mia is of Tupí-Guaraní
origin also falls out from a widespread patterns of grammaticalization of Tupí-Guaraní functional
items in Proto-Omagua-Kokama (see Michael et al. (in prep); O’Hagan (2011, 2012b)).
2.2.3.1.5 Epistemic Modality The ecclesiastical texts exhibit two second-position clitics with
clausal scope that encode epistemic modality, the certainty marker =tina and the veridical marker
=semai, each of which we discuss in turn below. Each marker attaches to the leftmost element in
the verb phrase, either the morpheme occupying the person or negation positions in Table 2.6, or a
sentence-initial adverbial when one is present. 48
The marker =tina is not attested in modern Omagua, although it exhibits a cognate in Kokama-
Kokamilla =tin (Vallejos Yopán 2010a:487-490). A reflex of Old Omagua =semai, namely =sImai,
46 In the ecclesiastical texts deontic modality is encoded via the imperfective VP-enclitic =aRi (see §2.2.3.1.2).
47 Jensen (1998) does not reconstruct the actual form of a Proto-Tupí-Guaraní frustrative, but elsewhere in her
reconstruction, Proto-Tupí-Guaraní forms are either identical or highly similar to Tupinambá forms (e.g., the
Proto-Tupí-Guaraní and Tupinambá clausal nominalizer (**)BaPé), suggesting that the form of the Proto-Tupí-
Guaraní frustrative would have been very similar to Tupinambá Biã. Sound changes that would yield POK *=mia
from a form similar, if not identical, to Tupinambá Biã, are attested elsewhere, i.e., **B > *m (see POK *=mai,
from PTG **BaPé above) and the neutralization of phonemic nasal vowels.
48 Note that =semai, when it does not appear strictly as a second-position clitic, assumes another function as an
exclusive focus operator (see §2.3.8.3).
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