Object relations in Canela

Abstract Canela is spoken by about 3,000 individuals belonging to the Canela Apãniekrá and Canela Ramkokamekrá peoples, who live in two indigenous lands (Área Indígena Porquinhos e Área Indígena Kanela, respectively) located in the state of Maranhão (Brazil). In this paper, I first distinguish the postpositional phrases that are (semantically) arguments and those that are adjuncts in Canela (Jê family, Macro-Jê stock). Next, I identify the arguments defined as the Patient (P), the Theme (T) and the Recipient (R) and display their respective grammatical properties (coding, behavior and control). The conclusion is that P and T are the direct object, while R (of verbs like ‘give’, ‘tell’ and ‘show’), when lexically specified, is the only indirect object.