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Subject–Object Concord in Coahuilteco

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Rudolph C. Troike
Rudolph C. Troike*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Abstract

Coahuilteco, an Indian language formerly spoken in southern Texas and northeastern Mexico, possesses a unique system of concord by which non-subject NP's, including clausal arguments, show person agreement with the subject NP of their clause. Coahuilteco is typologically SOV, with modifiers and determiners/relators following the noun in that order. Subject concord is marked by personal suffixes on the determiner/relator, or alternatively by person-marked particles or auxiliaries. The system serves to bracket constructions and permit tracking of subject scope (or verb dependency relations), fulfilling some of the same functions as switch-reference.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , September 1981 , pp. 658 - 673
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by the Linguistic Society of America

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