Wordhood in Chamacoco

This chapter investigates ‘wordhood’ in Chamacoco, a Zamucoan language with about 2,000 speakers who traditionally inhabit the department of Alto Paraguay in Paraguay. After having examined the concept of ‘word’ in Chamacoco culture and the phonological inventory of the language, this chapter defines the phonological word according to its phonological rules, segmental features, and prosodic features (stress, nasal harmony and vowel harmony). Then, the morphological structure of the main word classes (verbs, nouns and adjectives) is outlined in order to identify the grammatical word and the mismatches between phonological and grammatical word. The latter can consist of one or more phonological words, as for compound subordinators, complex predicates, and instances of reduplication. By contrast, owing to cliticization, one phonological word can comprise two or more grammatical words. Finally, the chapter describes the properties of regular clitics and distinguishes them from morphemes which are independent phonological words frequently undergoing cliticization.