Pilar Valenzuela

Navigating Affirmation and Negation:The Complexities of Yes/No Answersin Shipibo-Konibo (Panoan)

Abstract

The maingoal of this presentation is to provide a detailed account of yes/no answers inShipibo-Konibo, a Panoan language spoken by ca. 40,000 people in the centralPeruvian Amazon. A yes/no answer is defined as the most concise reply providingtruth value information to a polarity question, i.e. a question designed toelicit either an affirmative or negative response. Yes/no answers usuallymanifest as either stand-alone particles or sentence constituents repeated fromthe question (Sadock & Zwicky 1985, Holmberg 2016, Moser 2018). Nevertheless,the range of possible yes/no answers found in Shipibo-Konibo reveals a notable degreeof complexity that warrants a detailed investigation.

In many cases, the choice of construction hinges on thetransitivity of the (main or lexical) verb used in the question. However, thereare additional factors related to verb type and clause structure that come intoplay when forming these minimal responses to polarity questions (Valenzuela2003). It is the interplay of these factors, along with the morphosyntacticdevices involved, that make the Shipibo-Konibo system particularly noteworthy.

The structure of yes/no answers is a topic infrequently explored ingrammatical descriptions, probably because most languages employ relativelystraightforward strategies for them. Crucially, this is also the case for otherPanoan languages across the different main branches of the family. Therefore,this study not only deepens our understanding of Shipibo-Konibo grammar butalso demonstrates that a sophisticated system of yes/no answers can evolve in arelatively short period of time.

References

Holmberg,Anders. 2016. The syntax of yes and no. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Moser,Elena V. 2018. Answers to Polarity Questions. A Typological Study. Master’s

thesis, Stockholm University.
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Sadock,Jerold M., & Zwicky, Arnold. 1985. Speech Act Distinction in Syntax. Pages

155–196 of: Shopen, Timothy (ed), LanguageTypology and Syntactic Description.

Cambridge University Press.
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Valenzuela,Pilar M. Transitivity in Shipibo-Konibo Grammar. Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Oregon.

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