A Descriptive Grammar of Kalinago

Abstract

This dissertation is a descriptive grammar of Kalinago, a dormant Arawakan language that was spoken in the Caribbean area, primarily the Lesser Antilles. It is closely related to Garifuna a language currently spoken in Central America and Lokono, an endangered language spoken in South America. Chapter 1 provides a historical background of the Kalinago people, as well as an explanation of historical written documentation about the Kalinago language. Chapter 2 uses a historical linguistic approach to determine the phonetic inventory of the language from written documentation and related languages. Through this approach, I determine the existence of an aspiration distinction in stops, a voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative, as well as an aspirated nasal. Chapter 3 describes some of the more common Kalinago morphemes and argues that Kalinago is a middle voice marking language. In Chapter 4, the syntactic features of the language are explained, highlighting a possible VSO sentence structure and the organization of comparative phrases. Finally, Chapter 5 examines the role of linguistics in language revitalization and how it can be applied to revive and revitalize the Kalinago language.