Parataxis, hypotaxis and para-hypotaxis in the Zamucoan languages

The term “para-hypotaxis” is commonly used by Romance linguists to refer to sentences containing a proleptic dependent clause, with the main clause introduced by a coordinator. It is thus an intermediate structure between parataxis and hypotaxis; it should not be confused, however, with seemingly analogous phenomena, such as cosubordination. Traditionally considered as an idiosyncratic feature of the Old Romance languages (as well as Biblical Hebrew, Greek and Latin), para-hypotaxis has recently been discovered in at least one modern, genetically unrelated language (Swahili). This paper shows – with illustrations mostly stemming from the Zamucoan family (Ayoreo and Chamacoco) – that it is also widespread in several languages of the Chaco Boreal. The possible functional justifications of this peculiar syntactic phenomenon are discussed.