The grammar of body-part expressions in Iskonawa: Lexicalization, possession, prefixation, and incorporation

The chapter offers a study of the grammar of body-part expressions in Iskonawa, an obsolescing Pano language in the Ucayali Region (Peru) with only five native speakers. Body-part terms in Iskonawa may be either morphologically simple or complex words (including nominalizations), or compounds. There are three different constructions which are directly linked to body-part expressions in Iskonawa: possessive constructions, body-part prefixation, and body-part noun incorporation. This chapter argues that body-part prefixation is not as productive on verbs as it is on nouns or adjectives, in contrast to what has been claimed for other Pano languages. Incorporation of body-part nouns into the verb, rather than verbal body-part prefixation, is the preferred construction for expressing events related to body parts. Despite its productivity, body-part noun incorporation in Iskonawa has not been previously discussed in the literature.