Dr. Fuentes-Opazo, Pablo

This article provides a descriptive guide to the documentation of Chedungun, the regional variant of Mapudungun (ISO 639-2 code arn) that is spoken by the Pewenche people. The 15-hour documentation is currently deposited in the Endangered Language Archive (ELAR) and corresponds to Phase One of a long-term initiative that is currently progressing to a postdoctoral project (Phase Two). Both phases are supported and funded by the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme. Since the objective of the project is to document the endangered migratory lifestyle and language of the Pewenche people, we will reflect on how the territorial inaccessibility imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic challenged the project’s elemental strategy, which relied on several documentary journeys to the lands that are seasonally occupied by the Pewenche during the summer for transhumance purposes. We will show why the collaborative workflow sustained by self-documentation practices evolved from an auxiliary tool to a regular and essential element of the team’s current and future projects.

Despite its somewhat marginal occurrence, unattainability has been acknowledged as a genuine problematic element for the semantic analysis of modal constructions, particularly for those expressing desires (Heim in J Semant 9(3):183–221, 1992; Portner in Nat Lang Semant 5(2):167–211, 1997). However, considerably less attention has been given to unattainable duties. In this article, I suggest that just as worlds that are deemed desirable are not necessarily linked to worlds considered candidates for actuality, some circumstantial arrangements allow for obligational expressions the semantics of which evoke worlds that are deemed obligatory yet unattainable. As I will show, a careful examination of unattainable duties constructions reveals some unexplored semantic aspects of obligational ascriptions that are particularly relevant for the development of both X-marking and modal-tense interaction theories. This article provides a philosophical and linguistic account of the meaning and use of such constructions.

In Mapudungun, the suffix -fu- typically indicates the unsuccessful realization of either an event or its expected consequences. As is the case for frustrative morphemes in several unrelated languages, when applied to a stative VP, the interpretation tends to be linked to non-continuation. Interestingly, in addition to these core readings, -fu- also occurs in conditionals conveying counterfactuality, and in a large subclass of deontic and bouletic constructions, such as the ones that express weak necessity and unattainable desires. Following recent developments in the study of both frustratives and conditionals, this article shows how a modal analysis of -fu- can integrate these different readings into a unified account.