A Grammar of Tariana from Northwest Amazonia

This is a comprehensive reference grammar of Tariana an endangered Arawak language from a remote region in the northwest Amazonian jungle. Its speakers traditionally marry someone speaking a different language and as a result most people are fluent in five or six languages. Because of this rampant multilingualism Tariana combines a number of features inherited from the protolanguage with properties diffused from neighbouring but unrelated Tucanoan languages. Typologically unusual features of the language include: an array of classifiers independent of genders complex serial verbs case marking depending on the topicality of a noun and double marking of case and of number. Tariana has obligatory evidentiality: every sentence contains a special element indicating whether the information was seen heard or inferred by the speaker or whether the speaker acquired it from somebody else. This grammar will be a valuable source-book for linguists and others interested in natural languages.