A'ingae (or Cofán, ISO 639-3: con) is an Amazonian isolate spoken by ca. 1,500 Cofán people in the province of Sucumbíos (northeast Ecuador) and the department of Putumayo (southern Colombia). In addition to documenting and describing the language, I have explored a number of theoretical topics, including the morphophonology of stress and glottalization, recent sound changes, negative agreement on nominalizing heads, apprehensional semantics, second-position clitics, pied-piping, conditional constructions, and other.
1.1.1 descriptive sketch
I present the first comprehensive overview of the A'ingae phonology, including descriptions of the language's phonemic inventory, phonotactics, prominent phonological rules, nasality and nasal spreading, stress, glottalization, their morphophonology, and aspects of clause-level prosody.
The phonology of A'ingae. Language and Linguistics Compass 18(3), e12512. 2024. article
1.1.2 morphophonology of stress and glottalization
I describe and analyze A'ingae's verbal morphophonology of stress and glottalization. I argue that morpheme-specific stress deletion cannot be captured representationally. I demonstrate that the tier of the A'ingae glottal stop differs between two morphological domains and interacts with stress deletion, bearing out a new prediction of Cophonologies by Phase (Sande, Jenks, and Inkelas, 2020). I show that the patterns of stress and glottalization in subordinate clauses are sensitive to the morphological structure of the subordinate verb, violating bracket erasure (Kiparsky, 1982). I account for the bracket erasure violations by indexing phase faithfulness (McPherson and Heath, 2016) to the category of the input phase.
Phasal strength in A'ingae classifying subordination. In: Proceedings of the 2023 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Washington, DC: Linguistic Society of America. To appear. proceedings
Two grammars of A'ingae glottalization: A case for Cophonologies by Phase. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory. 2023. article ❧ Invited talk presented at the Atelier de phonologie research seminar Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis. 2022. slides ❧ Talk presented at the QP Fest, University of California, Berkeley. 2023. slides
Dominance is non-representational: Evidence from A'ingae verbal stress. Phonology 38(4), pp. 611–650. 2021. article
1.1.3 metrically-optimizing reduplication
I describe and analyze the A'ingae superplural reduplicative suffix -ʔσ, which requires that the base and the reduplicant form (ˈσ1̆σ2ʔ)σ2. I model this behavior with a reduplicant-specific cophonology (e.g. Orgun, 1996), which consists of a ranking of constraints motivated elsewhere in the language's grammar (Dąbkowski, 2023), and I demonstrate that A'ingae reduplication is phonologically optimizing.
A'ingae reduplication is phonologically optimizing. In: Supplemental Proceedings of the 2022 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Ed. by Noah Elkins, Bruce Hayes, Jinyoung Jo, and Jian-Leat Siah. Washington, DC: Linguistic Society of America. 2023. proceedings poster
1.1.4 diphthongs and their changes
I document a typologically unusual process of postlabial raising in A'ingae. I present a model which derives the postlabial raising through an interaction of constraint weights and the number of Q-Theoretic (Inkelas and Shih, 2016, 2017) subsegments, contributing a novel argument for the representations of Q-Theory. I argue that the contemporary variation in the distribution of ai and ɨi is a consequence of sound change, followed by recent replacement and partial paradigmatic leveling.
A Q-Theoretic solution to A'ingae postlabial raising. Linguistic Inquiry. Under revision. manuscript ❧ Poster presented at the 29th Manchester Phonology Meeting, University of Edinburgh and University of Manchester. 2022. poster
Postlabial raising and paradigmatic leveling in A'ingae: A diachronic study from the field. In: Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 8(1). 5428. Ed. by Patrick Farrell. Washington, DC: Linguistic Society of America. 2023. proceedings poster
I identify the "nominal negative" suffix -a nn, which obligatorily attaches to noun phrase-internal functional heads that nominalize negated predicates. I propose that -a nn expones agreement with the Neg(ative) feature on T. Therefore, I document the first case of agreement with polarity on nominalizers to date.
Polarity agreement in A'ingae nominalizations. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Denver, CO. 2023. handout
In a collaborative project with Scott AnderBois, we describe and analyze different uses of the A'ingae apprehensional morpheme =sa'ne appr. We put forth a formal account of rationale and precautioning clauses, which captures language-internal asymmetries and typological trends within this semantic domain. We propose a typological framework for describing and comparing apprehensional synchrony and diachrony.
The semantics and expression of apprehensional modality, as second author, with Scott AnderBois. Language and Linguistics Compass. Accepted with minor revisions. manuscript
Rationale and precautioning clauses: Insights from A'ingae, as first author, with Scott AnderBois. Journal of Semantics, ffac012. 2024. article
A'ingae =sa'ne 'appr' and the semantic typology of apprehensional adjuncts, as equal author, with Scott AnderBois. In: Proceedings of the 30th Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference, pp. 43–62. Ed. by Joseph Rhyne, Kaelyn Lamp, Nicole Dreier, and Chloe Kwon. Washington, DC: Linguistic Society of America. 2020. proceedings
The apprehensional domain in A'ingae (Cofán), as first author, with Scott AnderBois. In: Apprehensional constructions in a cross-linguistic perspective. Ed. by Marine Vuillermet, Martina Faller, and Eva Schultze Berndt. Studies in Diversity Linguistics. Language Science Press. To appear. chapter
I argue that A'ingae second-position clitics are matrix clausal C-heads. Thus, I show that—despite its apparent non-configurationality—A'ingae has a structured left periphery. I describe A'ingae pied-piping structures and provide a Q-based (Cable, 2010) analysis thereof.
A'ingae pied-piping: A Q-based analysis. Paper presented at the 4th Symposium on Amazonian Languages, University of California, Berkeley. 2022. handout
A'ingae second-position clitics are matrix C-heads. In: Proceedings of the 25th Workshop on Structure and Constituency in the Languages of the Americas. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Working Papers in Linguistics. To appear. proceedings
I have documented A'ingae in the indigenous communities of Dureno and Sinangoé (Sucumbíos, Ecuador) and remotely. I have deposited over 14h of oral narrative video recordings (of which 2h30min transcribed and translated) and elicitation data, including fieldnotes and over 70h of audio recordings. I have played a key role in developing a FLEx database of morphologically analyzed A'ingae texts.
A'ingae (Ecuador and Colombia) – Language snapshot. Language Documentation and Description 20, pp. 1–12. 2021. article
A'ingae field materials. 2020-19. California Language Archive, Survey of California and Other Indian Languages. University of California, Berkeley. collection
A'ingae language documentation, as equal author, with Justin Bai, Kalinda Pride, and Nicholas Tomlin. Poster presented at Summer Research Symposium, Brown University, Providence, RI. 2017. poster
I conducted other A'ingae-related research, including projects on conditional constructions and nominal classifiers.
Conditional constructions in A'ingae. Manuscript. University of California, Berkeley. 2021. manuscript
Cofán comes in all shapes and sizes. Manuscript. Providence, RI: Brown University. 2017. manuscript
