Body-part nouns, prefixation, incorporation, and compounding in Panoan and Takanan: Evidence for the Pano-Takanan hypothesis?

A fundamental open question in South American classificatory linguistics is whether the abundant lexical and grammatical affinities exhibited by the Pano and Takana languages from Western Amazonia are due to genetic inheritance or prolonged language contact. Although the proposal of a Pano-Takana stock has traditionally been accepted in the literature, it has since been disputed. In this chapter we show that several body-part nouns in proto-Pano and proto-Takana are not only very similar but exhibit regular sound correspondences. Furthermore, we claim that the similarities between body-part expressions in Pano and in Takana go beyond the mere lexicon. Although it is true that only Pano languages exhibit body-part prefixation, Takana languages feature body-part noun incorporation and compounding. We argue that Pano body-part prefixation can in fact be interpreted as a historical development from source constructions like body-part noun incorporation and compounding, as they are synchronically found in Takana. The lexical and gramatical correspondences found among body-part constructions in Pano and Takana languages provide new evidence in favor of the Pano-Takana hypothesis.