The diachrony of person-number marking in the Lokono-Wayuunaiki subgroup of the Arawak family: reconstruction, sound change and analogy

• Person-number prefixes and personal pronouns are reconstructed for the PLW language.
• Developments are compatible with sound changes and attested morphophonemic patterns.
• Analogical, non-phonetic developments account for some forms in Lokono and Añun.
• The origin of personal pronouns in person-marked deictic formatives is proposed.
• Broader implications for Arawak historical linguistics are considered.

The present study advances reconstructions of the cross-referencing prefixes and independent pronouns of Proto-Lokono-Wayuunaiki (PLW), the ancestral language of the Lokono-Wayuunaiki subgroup of the Arawak language family. I arrive first at pre-Wayuunaiki and pre-Lokono forms by means of language-internal reconstruction and then proceed to a comparative investigation of the relevant patterns. I propose a number of developments that are consistent with synchronically attested morphophonemic alternations and regular sound changes. Analogical, non-phonetically-based developments are invoked to account for some Lokono and Añun forms. Finally, broader implications for Arawak historical linguistics are considered. These include the hypothesis that personal pronouns originate in the prefixation of deictic formatives by the person-number cross-referencing prefixes and a proposed modification in the form of one reconstructed cross-referencing prefix of the Proto-Arawak language.