Bororo, like most languages of South America, is
synthetic and
agglutinative (albeit with some degree of fusion). However, it cannot strictly be labelled "
polysynthetic"; it does not make use of
incorporation or any other means of particularly extensive
derivation. Nominal morphology is fairly simple – on a level comparable with modern
Romance languages – and verbal morphology, while somewhat more complex, cannot exceed three or four affixes on any given verb, in sharp contrast to the better-known "polysynthetic" languages of the Americas such as
Nahuatl or
Mohawk. Six basic word classes exist in Bororo: nouns and verbs (both open classes) and conjunctions, postpositions, adverbs, and pronouns (all closed). Note that there is no independent class of adjectives; the functions of adjectives in European languages are filled by verbs or nouns in Bororo. This section provides an overview of Bororo morphology as organized by these classes.
Nouns There is no category of obligatory nominal affixes in Bororo; a noun phrase may therefore be composed of a single unmarked root.
Plurality Most nouns are pluralized by means of a plural suffix, whose most common allomorph is
-doge:
arigao "dog" pluralizes to
arigao-doge "dogs". The other allomorphs are
-e (mainly following names of animals, e.g.
juko-e "monkeys"),
-mage (mainly following kinship terms, e.g.
i-rago-mage "my grandchildren") and -
ge (mainly following pronouns, e.g.
ema-ge "they"). In addition, there is a "zero morpheme"
*bo- which can occur only with the plural suffix
-e, meaning "things" or "people", hence the Bororos' own term for themselves
Boe. Some nouns, however, are basically plural and require a
marked singular suffix
-dü. These generally refer to human beings; examples include "white people" ( "a white person") and "men" ( "a man").
Diminution and gender Diminution is a productive process in Bororo. The diminutive suffix is -; "snake" therefore may become "little snake" (Portuguese
cobrinha). This has the allomorph when attached to a plural noun: "snakes" (an irregular plural) becomes
awagoe-kügüre "little snakes". Bororo has no obligatory marking of
grammatical gender. Many distinctions made by noun gender in Portuguese and other languages with the category are simply made by
suppletive forms in Bororo, as in
marido/
oredüje "husband/wife" (Portuguese
esposo/
esposa,
marido/
mulher), or by compounding with the nouns
imedü "man" and
aredü "woman" – hence
tapira imedü "bull" and
tapira aredü "cow" from
tapira "cattle". However, there is also a feminine derivative suffix
-do, which is used with personal names and demonstratives:
awü "this",
awü-do "this (woman)".
Postpositions Bororo uses postpositions rather than prepositions. Notably, these postpositions may be
inflected with the same set of bound pronouns as verbs and inalienable possession; for example,
ae "to, toward" can become
et-ai "to them".
Focus One postposition,
ji, is used to establish the nominal focus of a sentence – what Crowell (1979) refers to as "range or referent". In some cases, this functions very similarly to focusing prepositions in English:
e-mago-re tori ji, "they talked
about the mountains". However, the range of
ambitransitive verbs in Bororo is much narrower (if indeed ambitransitives exist at all) than in English, and so several verbs which are transitive in English require focusing with
-ji in Bororo:
imedü jorüdü-re karo ji "the men ate the fish" (compare
a-jorüdü-re "you ate"). These verbs – further examples of which are
ra "sing",
aidü "want", and
rö "do" – function exactly as any other intransitive verb in Bororo.
Demonstratives Bororo has three degrees of
deictic distance: near (
a-), medium (
no-), and distant (
ce-). To modify a noun, these must precede the relative marker
-wü:
a-wü imedü "
this man",
ce-wü imedü "
that man (over there)". Since Bororo lacks
articles, these occasionally take their place, but not nearly as frequently as true articles are used in English or Portuguese.
Possession Like many indigenous languages of South America, Bororo distinguishes
inclusive and exclusive first-person plurals as well as
alienable and inalienable possession. Inalienable possession is the only nominal category marked by prefixes; since these are identical with the pronominal prefixes of verbs, they are listed in the section "Pronouns". The table below provides a list of alienable possessors with the example word
tori, "stone":
Verbs Bororo verbal morphology is basically divided along lines of
transitivity. Both transitive and intransitive verbs take the same set of bound pronouns to convey subjects and objects (e.g.
i-reru-re, a-reru-re "I danced, you danced" /
i-re a-reru-dö "I make you dance"), but each has an exclusive set of suffixes. "Intransitive" suffixes naturally apply to intransitive verbs, for which there is only one core argument – for example, the neutral aspect
-re in
i-reru-re – but also to the
agent of a transitive clause, hence
i-re a-reru-dö; meanwhile, "transitive" suffixes can only be applied to the main verb of a transitive clause – e.g. the causative
-dö in
i-re a-reru-dö. For this reason, the suffixes listed in this section cannot properly be called "verbal" suffixes alone; they are grouped in this section merely for convenience.
Intransitive and ergative As mentioned above, these morphemes are suffixed either to the verb of an intransitive clause or to the agent of a transitive clause (A).
Aspect Bororo uses six suffixes, as well as a null suffix /-∅/, to convey
grammatical aspect: three explicit grammatical aspects, divided into "direct" and "
indirect" marking. These are the only strictly mandatory affixes of any kind; they vary in frequency, but all are productive and fairly common. All of these seven options are mutually exclusive.
Neutral The most common suffix in Bororo by far is the declarative or "neutral"
-re. This suffix conveys a basic and unmarked tense, aspect, and mood for a declarative or interrogative sentence:
re "the horse is big",
re "where did he go?" Since it does not convey any tense information, it can be translated as either present or past in English: '''', for example, could be interpreted either as "the horse is big" or "the horse was big".
Stative The stative suffix
-nüre indicates that the action described by the verb is either ongoing or essential to the subject:
et-ore e-ra-nüre "the children were singing", '
"the man is (essentially) bad" (contrast with neutral ' "the man is bad").
Purpose / Hortative The "purpose" suffix -
wö indicates that the action in question is the desired result of another (itself usually marked with neutral aspect). This usage always requires a nominalizer
dü- and the postposition
, "in order to":
wö "I left so that you could sleep" (or "... in order for you to sleep"). This suffix is also used to indicate a
hortative mood:
pa-goage-wö karo-ji "let's eat the fish". This usage does not require another clause or the '''' construction.
Recent Recent aspect is not conveyed with a suffix
per se but rather the absence of a suffix; that is, a sentence without an aspect suffix is to be understood as occurring in the present or the recent past. Sentences using the other aspect markers may also be understood as present or recent, but only the absence of a suffix conveys this explicitly:
imedü maru-∅ "the man is hunting".
Indirect All three explicit aspect suffixes can also be rendered as indirect, meaning that the action they describe was itself described in speech or thought – corresponding broadly to the subjunctive in European languages. Verbs marked as indirect therefore always follow another verb (again usually in the neutral aspect):
imedü ako-re awagü pega-ye, "the man said that the cobra was bad / mean". However, direct suffixes may also occur in this context; the indirect only adds an explicit layer of uncertainty or secondhand knowledge. For example,
ye means "I thought you were there (but I didn't know)", whereas
re would mean "I thought you were there (and so you were)". There is no independent indirect affix. Instead, the three ordinary aspect suffixes change to apparently-related but historically obscure alternate forms when rendered as indirect. There is no indirect version of the recent aspect
-∅; its meaning appears to be covered by the neutral indirect
-ye. The direct and indirect aspectual suffixes are compared below.
Negative The negative suffix
-ka- / -ga- simply negates a verb as in English, and may be followed by any aspect marker:
a-reru-re "you danced" becomes
a-reru-ka-re "you did not dance". This likewise forms a negative imperative without any special marking or fusion:
a-reru-ka-ba "don't dance!"
Hypothetical The hypothetical suffix
-mödü- indicates that the action is assumed (whether by the speaker or indirectly), but not definitely stated, to have taken place:
u-tu-mödü-ka-re "he
probably did not go",
u-tu-mödü-ye "(someone said that) he did not go". This fuses with the neutral suffix
-re to form
-möde:
u-tu-möde "he probably went".
Inchoative The inchoative suffix
-gödü indicates that an action is beginning or has begun:
meri rekodü-gödü-re "the sun
is beginning to set".
Transitive These three suffixes apply only to verbs which carries the patient or object of a transitive clause (O).
Causative The causative suffix
-dö indicates that the subject of the verb causes the main object to perform an action, adding a level of
valency:
i-re a-tu-dö "I made you go". Theoretically, this suffix could embed new verbs indefinitely:
i-re a-dö u-dö e-tu-dö "I made you make him make them go", but as in English it is rare to use more than two degrees.
Inceptive The inceptive suffix
-gö never occurs independently; it is the result of fusion with the causative. As a result, it has both a strictly
inceptive meaning and a causative one, and therefore similarly adds a degree of valency. Several verbs which could be translated with single morphologically simple words in English are formed using this suffix: examples include
rüdiwa-gö "to teach", literally "to cause to begin to know" and
pemega-gö "to prepare", literally "to cause to begin to be ready / good".
Imminent The imminent suffix
-yagu indicates that an action is or was about to happen, or alternatively that it is only "nearly" accomplished:
a-re a-tu-yagu "you were about to go",
e-re tü-yagu pu-reo-re "they are almost alike". This is technically a transitive sentence in Bororo, unlike in English; however, it is restricted entirely to coreferential arguments (i.e. the subject and object are identical).
Pronouns Personal pronouns are divided into free and bound forms. Free forms are used to strongly mark a topic (marked by the "fronting" suffix
-re: homophonous with but not identical to the declarative
re-):
imi-re i-tu-re "(as for me,) I'm going". They are also used in "
verbless" sentences (for which see below):
ema-re-o "here it is / this is it". Bound forms, meanwhile, are used to mark verb subjects and objects, inalienable possession, and postpositional inflection. The full list of free and bound forms (but not alienable possessors, for which see "Possession" above) is shown in the table below. • Crowell (1979) references a first-person singular bound form
yo- occasionally, but does not provide any description of this form or its use; it may be a
typographic error. Nonato (2008) does not record it. •
U- is used as the third-person bound pronoun as an agentive subject, as the subject of some irregular intransitive verbs (most commonly
-tu- "to go") and as the inalienable possessor of some irregular nouns. Otherwise, third person singular is not marked. == Syntax ==