Irrealis in Pilagai and Toba? Syntactic versus Pragmatic Coding

Abstract

Despite the agglutinative tendency encountered in the grammars of Toba and Pilaga (both Guaykuruan languages), verbs do not exhibit tense and mood categories. We argue that irrealis is signaled by the 'distal' markers ga' in Pilaga and ka in Toba. We show that signaling is at the pragmatic level of coding, and not yet at the syntactic level. 'Distal' deictics occur attached to demonstratives and proforms, nouns, and interrogative words in declarative and nondeclarative speech acts. They apply to any nominal participant per- ceived as 'absent' or 'unknown'. From the stance of both the speaker and the hearer, ga' and ka may pragmatically code that the event in question has not been realized, is hypothetical, or is a future projection. In addition, we hypoth- esize a diachronic path for development of negative existential constructions in these languages and a possible relationship between the 'distal' markers, negation, and irrealis. 1. Introduction. Guaykuruan languages constitute a subset of South Amer- ican native languages that has been relatively understudied. Speakers of Toba, Pilaga, Mocovi, and Kadiweu are found in northeastern and central Argentina and in the Brazilian and Paraguayan Chaco, with numbers that vary greatly from one linguistic population to another.1 Another language of this family,