Three Puzzles from Camsá Morphology

Abstract

Camsá (also spelled Kamsá, Kaments̈á, and Caments̈á), is a language isolate spoken in Colombia at a transition point between the Amazon lowlands and Andean highlands (O’Brien 2018:2). It is endangered and understudied, with an elderly speech community and no more than 10 published linguistic works (O’Brien 2018:23), with O’Brien (2018) representing the first reference grammar. Camsá has also been described as morphologically complex (O’Brien 2018:27). These qualities: genetically isolated, typologically transitional, understudied, and morphologically complex, all make further analysis of Camsá a potentially valuable contribution to our understanding of morphology. In this paper, we explore three puzzles present throughout the language. First, we explore an alternation in the forms of adjectives triggered by linear positioning with respect to their head nouns, and argue it represents an alternation between true noun-adjective structure building and noun-adjective compounding. Second, we describe a process within the verb that seems akin to noun incorporation or noun-verb compounding. Finally, we revisit a decomposition of the agreement system, arguing that the o vowel present in several prefixes is a separable morpheme; and suggest that, moreover, this morpheme is sensitive to the presence of an incorporated noun.