Towards a reconstruction of the pronominal system of Proto-Witotoan from the Northwest Amazon

This article reconstructs the pronominal system – free pronouns and verbal cross-referencing markers – of proto-Witotoan, the ancestor of Murui-Muina, Ocaina, and Nonuya of Northwest Amazonia, namely Colombia and Peru. Using a comparative-historical approach grounded in regular sound correspondences, we show that: (i) proto-Witotoan distinguished between singular and plural in the 1st and 2nd person, and dual was innovated from singular and plural bases already before the family’s breakup; (ii) 3rd person forms were not independent pronouns but combinations of demonstratives and classifiers; (iii) the bound verbal person markers developed from free pronominal bases; and (iv) prefixal person indexing on the verb was the proto-Witotoan morphological pattern. The reconstruction clarifies the internal historical development of person marking within the Witotoan family and, for the case of 3rd person pronouns, situates it within broader regional patterns of demonstrative-based pronominal systems