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A structure-function description of Terena phrases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

John T. Bendor-Samuel
John T. Bendor-Samuel*
Affiliation:
Summer Institute of Linguistics
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Extract

The object of this article is to illustrate a particular model of grammatical description by using it to describe the Terena phrase. This model can, for convenience, be given the label “structure-function.” Like any model it employs certain interrelated categories and terms which are mutually defining. Each category can only be understood in reference to the model as a whole.

This model sets up grammatical units which are hierarchically arranged. The hierarchy consists of a series of levels of description. At each level there is a grammatical unit and this grammatical unit gives its name to the level concerned. At a given level there is only one grammatical unit. Each such grammatical unit consists of one or more of the units next below it in the hierarchy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Spring 1963 , pp. 59 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1963

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References

1 The Terena Indians, numbering approximately 5000, live in eleven villages in southwestern Mato Grosso, Brazil. Their language is classified as Arawakan; cf. N. A. McQuown’s classification in the American Anthropologist 57 (1955), pp. 501-570. The data for this paper were gathered during three periods amounting in all to fifteen months between January 1959 and April 1961, at the village of União, near Miranda. This field work was carried out under the auspices of the National Museum of Brazil.

2 This use of “structure” and “function” is exemplified in my “The Verbal Piece in Jebero,” Word: Monograph 4, pp. 9-10.

3 A full-scale description of Terena is in MS., to be published by the National Museum of Brazil.