Differential place marking beyond place names: Evidence from two Amazonian languages

Not all spatial adjuncts behave alike. In some languages, certain display different marking or combinatorial possibilities than others. Recent functional-typological studies make two claims about this differential place phenomenon: (1) it is primarily motivated by noun semantics, opposing names and other nouns; (2) realized as a contrast between zero-marking overt of adjunct function. We evaluate view against new fieldwork data from Indigenous Amazonian Dâw (Naduhup) Ticuna (isolate). Ticuna, conditioned not only but also the perceptual properties referents morphosyntactic semantic verbs. Further, phenomenon alternations zero marking, among markers in set with which can combine. These findings suggest that – like case phenomena, such split ergativity cross-linguistically diverse suite factors within beyond phrase.