Tohono o'odham

Le tohono o'odham est une langue pima uto-aztèque parlée en Arizona dans la région de Tucson, et dans le nord-est de l'État de Sonora au Mexique.

Syntaxe

Le tohono o'odham partage avec le breton la propriété V2.

 Hale (2001:1):
 "Particles are the only "part of speech" which has vowel-initial members. Since no sentence can be vowel initial, various strategies are employed to avoid this in the interaction between a vowel-initial particle and those forms of the auxiliary which avoid initial position, giving rise to the aux second order which prevails in O'odham finite clauses. 
 The irrealis particle o (glossed FUT) either blocks aux-second or else employs the composite form w-o, with w- appearing in initial position. 

(1)a.	w-at	o	'i	gei.
	w-tAUX3	FUT	INCEP	fall:PERF
	'He/she/it will fall.', 'He/she/it is liable to fall.'

Where aux-second is blocked in the irrealis, and the w-o alternative is not taken, the auxiliary itself accommodates the situation by appearing with the complementizer ku-, and hence in "second position," the complementizer counting as initial.

(1)b.	k-∅	hed*ai	s*oak?.
	COMP-AUX3	who	cry:IMPERF
	'... who is crying.'

This ku-complementizer may itself delete, if the auxiliary base is overt, superficially leaving the auxiliary in initial position and stripped, so to speak, of the initial CV support element ('a-) which would ordinarily appear on an unprefixed auxiliary.

(1)c.	(ku-)t	o	'i	gei.
	(COMP)-tAUX3	FUT	INCEP	fall:PERF
	'He/she/it will fall.', 'He/she/it would fall (generic).'

The particles as* 'just, merely' and as*kia 'still, yet,' actually block aux-second, giving the only true case in which the auxiliary must remain initial (thereby avoiding a vowel-initial sentence).

(1)d.	'o	as*kia	ko:s*	g 'ali.
	AUX3	still	sleep:IMPERF	ART child
	'The child is still sleeping.'

Termonilogie

On trouve aussi pour cette langue le nom papago qui est cependant dépréciatif. Le terme papago n'est pas une auto-dénomination et signifie 'mangeurs de haricots'. Le terme tohono o'odham est une auto-dénomination qui signifie 'peuple du désert'.

Bibliographie

• Alverez, Albert & Kenneth Hale. [antérieur à Voegelin & Voegelin 1970]. 'Toward a Manual of Papago Grammar: Some Phonological Terms', IJAL 36.83-97.

• Hale, Kenneth L. 1983. 'Papago (k)c', IJAL 49:3, 299-327.

• Hale, Kenneth & Elisabeth Selkirk. 1987. 'Government and Tonal Phrasing in Papago', Phonology Yearbook 4, Cambridge University Press, 151–183. [www.jstor.org/stable/4615414 texte].

• Hale, Kenneth L. 2001. 'Preliminary Remarks on the Syntax and Semantics O’odham (Papago) Particles', conf. paper at the SULA Conference, University of Massachusetts.

• Hili, J. H. & Zepeda, Ofelia. 1998. 'Le pluriel en tohono o'odham (papago)', Anthropological linguistics 40(1), Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, Anthropology Department, 1-42.

• Ojeda, Almerindo E. 1998. 'La sémantique des collectifs et des distributifs en papago', Natural Language Semantics 6(3), Dordrecht: Springer, 245-270.

• Saxton, Dean. 1982. 'Papago', Studies in Uto-Aztecan Grammar 3: Uto-Aztecan Grammatical Sketches, Ronald W. Langacker, ed. Summer Institute of Linguistics Series. Arlington: University of Texas, 94-266.

• Voegelin, C. F. & F. M. Voegelin. 1970. 'Our Knowledge of Semantics and How It Is Obtained (With Reference to Hopi /ˀas/ and Papago /čim/)', International Journal of American Linguistics 36(4):241-246.

• Zepeda, Ofelia. 2016. A Tohono O'odham Grammar, University of Arizona Press.