Pupỹkary tywy, takarena, ῖthu ykynypuku: meronímia e sua contribuição para o conhecimento e ensino da língua Apurinã (Aruák)

Abstract

This work deals with meronymy in Apurinã, that is, semantic processes involved in the expression of part/whole relationships (CRUSE, 2011), as well as the application of this knowledge in the making of an illustrated digital book, to be used as a didactic tool for the teaching and strengthening of the Apurinã language. Most meronyms in the language are encoded as inalienable nouns, which differ from alienable ones in terms of their morphosyntactic marking patterns (FREITAS, 2017), although there are meronyms that are encoded as alienable, such as some parts of plants, for example, pi-txipuku-re (2sg-fruit-possd) ‘your fruit’ / txipukury (fruit-n.possd) ‘fruit’. Among inalienable nouns, body parts (e.g. ny-tapike (1sgleg.of) ‘my leg’ / tapike-txi (leg.of-n.possd) ‘leg’) form not only a semantic class that also includes concepts related to the body — literally or metaphorically, but they have specific morphosyntactic characteristics, such as the suffix -txi. Such a suffix does not occur with kinship terms, since the latter never occur unpossessed. This shows that, in the macro semantic domain of meronyms in the language, there is a complex organization, although systematic, in terms of their different patterns of morphosyntactic marking. Given this complexity, it is important to have this knowledge organized in a didactic material that can help in teaching the language in Apurinã schools.