Reassessing the Tupi‑Guarani “gerund”

This article investigates the morphosyntactic variation of gerunds in Tupi-Guarani languages, challenging traditional descriptions and highlighting previously overlooked structural features. The central hypothesis is that Tupi-Guarani gerunds exhibit substantial morphological and syntactic diversity, rather than uniformity, reflecting intra-family variation. The study aims to identify recurrent morphosyntactic patterns across multiple languages and dialects, and to propose a theoretical framework that accounts for this variation from a cross-linguistic perspective. Drawing on a diverse corpus of previously available yet underexamined data, including both published materials and unexplored sources, the article shifts attention from semantic and diachronic considerations—which dominate past research—toward the synchronic properties of gerunds. The analysis shows that the so-called Tupi-Guarani “gerund” is a form type whose realizations fulfill multiple syntactic functions across languages, including dependent uses and, in some systems, main predicate function. These functions are established on the basis of morphosyntactic diagnostics such as argument expression, person-indexing patterns, and argument sharing between predicates. By situating these findings within a broader typological perspective, the study highlights the versatility of Tupi-Guarani gerunds and offers a refined account of their structural diversity and range of functions.