Wordhood in Chamacoco

This chapter will address the concept of ‘word’ in Chamacoco. This section introduces the language and its main typological features. Then, the concept of ‘word’ in the Chamacoco culture (§1.1) and the Chamacoco phonological inventory (§1.2) will be examined. After having set the scene, the notion of phonological word in Chamacoco will be analysed, by identifying its segmental features and phonological rules (§2), and its prosodic features (§3). Then the Chamacoco grammatical word will be defined (§4) in order to discuss the mismatches between phonological and grammatical word (§5). Such mismatches involve clitics of two types: regular clitics which are cliticized under all circumstances (discussed in §6) and morphemes which can form an independent phonological word or undergo cliticization (discussed in §7). Throughout the chapter, I will also pay attention to historical changes and comparison with related languages, whenever this contributes to the understanding of phonological and grammatical word in present-day Chamacoco