Conjunct/disjunct marking in Awa Pit

Abstract

Awa Pit, a Barbacoan language spoken in Colombia and Ecuador, has a conjunct/disjunct system of verb suffixing similar to a person-marking system. It is a binary system, with conjunct used for first person in statements and second person in questions, while disjunct is used for second and third person in statements and first and third person in questions. Unlike the conjunct/disjunct system in a language such as Kathmandu Newari (Hale 1980), where conjunct is only found with volitional agents of controlled verbs, in Awa Pit volitionality and similar phenomena have no effect on the system. In addition, the use of conjunct is not dependent only on the person of the subject or agent; any statement with a first person argument (subject, object, second object) or affected participant, or any question with a second person argument or affected participant, will be marked as conjunct. If the sentence is past tense, there is a choice of three suffixes: one indicates a conjunct subject and one a conjunct undergoer, and the third shows that there is no conjunct participant in the sentence. In nonpast tenses, there is only a binary system; all that is indicated is whether there is a conjunct entity or not.