Thiago Costa Chacon

@unb.br

Associate Professor of Linguistics (Instituto de Letras, Departamento de Linguística)
Universidade de Brasília

Thiago Costa Chacon


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https://researchid.co/thiagochacon

RESEARCH, TEACHING, or OTHER INTERESTS

Linguistics and Language, Anthropology
17

Scopus Publications

624

Scholar Citations

13

Scholar h-index

15

Scholar i10-index

Scopus Publications

  • Between territories and worlds: spatiality and counter-cartography among the Kotiria and Kubeo on the Upper Vaupés River (AM)
    Pedro Rocha, Thiago Costa Chacon
    Boletim do Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi Ciencias Humanas, 2024
    Resumo Este artigo discute a relação entre as concepções, os discursos e as produções cartográficas sobre o território dos povos Kotiria (Wanano) e Kubeo, habitantes do rio Uaupés, na Terra Indígena do Rio Negro, e falantes de línguas da família Tukano. Nossos dados e reflexões têm como principal base um projeto de Plano de Gestão Ambiental e Territorial Kotiria e Kubeo (PGTA-KK), realizado entre 2014 e 2016. Analisamos como se deu o processo de mapeamento e de produção cartográfica, assim como os diversos mapas resultantes do PGTA-KK. A partir dos lugares nomeados que foram mapeados, exploramos a relação entre toponímia, narrativas míticas, benzimentos e outras formas de expressões simbólicas de conhecimentos assentados nos lugares e na paisagem. A análise comparativa dessas questões entre os Kotiria e Kubeo enseja uma reflexão sobre uma espacialidade compartilhada como uma dimensão simbólica que estrutura o pensamento sobre o território. Com base nisso, revisitamos a produção cartográfica kotiria e kubeo para refletir sobre os limites e as potencialidades da utilização de diferentes tipos de mapas e atividades de mapeamento por povos indígenas, como as chamadas ‘contracartografias’, as ‘cartografias indígenas’, os ‘etnomapeamentos’ e outras formas de produções cartográficas capazes de inovar na forma de representar o território de modo a serem mais fiéis às concepções indígenas sobre lugares, territórios e mundos.
  • Diversity, multilingualism and inter-ethnic relations in the long-term history of the Upper Rio Negro region of the Amazon
    Luis Cayón, Thiago Chacon
    Interface Focus, 2023
    The Upper Rio Negro regional social system is made up of more than 30 languages belonging to six linguistic families. This results from socio-historical processes stretching back at least two millennia, which have built a system with different levels of autonomy and hierarchy associated with a mythical and ritual complex, and with social and linguistic exchanges. The analysis of these processes require an interdisciplinary outlook to understand the ways in which people from different linguistic families interacted and created it. More specifically, we ask how linguistic and cultural diversity have been created in the context of intense relations of multilingualism and inter-ethnic contact. To this end, we integrate perspectives from historical linguistics (regarding languages from the Tukanoan, Arawakan and Naduhup families) with archaeological data from the Amazonian past. Through this multidisciplinary approach, we seek to develop a linguistic–anthropological understanding of the dynamics shaping the region's diversity and inter-ethnic relations. We show that processes creating diversity are interrelated with changes in social histories, and are especially tied to the establishment of new forms of social organization as a result of pre-colonial inter-ethnic relations. This has led to the construction of various local multilingual ecologies connected to macro-regional processes in Amazonia.
  • Deriving calibrations for Arawakan using archaeological evidence
    Lev Michael, Fernando de Carvalho, Thiago Chacon, Konrad Rybka, Andrés Sabogal, et al.
    Interface Focus, 2023
    This paper identifies time calibration points for accurately rooting and dating the phylogeny of Arawakan, the largest Indigenous linguistic family of the Americas. We present and model a methodology for extracting calibration points from the archaeological record, based on principles of geographical overlap between archaeological sites and Arawakan peoples, and on continuity in material culture between archaeological finds and modern Arawakan practices. Based on a consensus model of the expansion of the Arawakan family from Central Amazonia, we focus on archaeological finds in Arawakan expansion zones, where Arawakan material culture abruptly appears in a given region, and where only a single major Arawakan subgroup/clade is present. We find 12 calibration points from archaeological sites in Arawakan expansion zones and also identify more recent calibration points from the historical record based on first mentions of ethnonyms and early sources of lexical data.
  • Interpreting mismatches between linguistic and genetic patterns among speakers of Tanimuka (Eastern Tukanoan) and Yukuna (Arawakan)
    Leonardo Arias, Nicholas Q. Emlen, Sietze Norder, Nora Julmi, Magdalena Lemus Serrano, et al.
    Interface Focus, 2023
    Northwestern Amazonia is home to a great degree of linguistic diversity, and the human societies in that region are part of complex networks of interaction that predate the arrival of Europeans. This study investigates the population and language contact dynamics between two languages found within this region, Yukuna and Tanimuka, which belong to the Arawakan and Tukanoan language families, respectively. We use evidence from linguistics, ethnohistory, ethnography and population genetics to provide new insights into the contact dynamics between these and other human groups in NWA. Our results show that the interaction between these groups intensified in the last 500 years, to the point that it is difficult to differentiate between them genetically. However, this close interaction has led to more substantial contact-induced language changes in Tanimuka than in Yukuna, consistent with a scenario of language shift and asymmetrical power relations.
  • Desana numerical symbols An indigenous creation narrated by Diakuru and Kisibi
    Karenleigh A. Overmann, Thiago Chacon, Annick Payne
    Written Language and Literacy, 2022
    In 2006, a narrative of the Desana people included a system of graphic symbols reported as a historical Indigenous invention used during intertribal warfare to count the number of enemies and pass warning information. This paper outlines and evaluates the Desana graphic system. The Desana people are described, and their timeline of mythical events is compared to historical accounts of the region. Contemporary Desana spoken numbers are then characterized as a quinary system with a restricted extent that differs significantly from the graphic writing system as presented in the cultural narrative. Implications for the development of writing systems generally and numerical notations specifically are explored. We conclude that the numerical symbols represent cultural diffusion of both European decimal numerals and the idea of writing. However, these were influenced by, synthesized with, and ultimately transformed through their contact with Indigenous cultural practices and concepts, making them an authentic Desana invention.
  • Migration and Trade as Drivers of Language Spread and Contact in Indigenous Latin America
    Thiago Costa Chacon
    Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact Population Movement and Language Change Volume 1, 2022
  • LANGUAGE CHANGE AND LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY: Studies in honour of Lyle Campbell
    Language Change and Linguistic Diversity Studies in Honour of Lyle Campbell, 2022
  • Language Change and Diversity at the Crossroads of Historical Linguistics, Language Documentation, and Linguistic Typology
    Language Change and Linguistic Diversity Studies in Honour of Lyle Campbell, 2022
  • South America
    Thiago Costa Chacon, Fernando O. de Carvalho
    Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody, 2021
    This chapter discusses the prosodic systems of South American native languages. It provides the state of the art of the current knowledge and lays out promising directions for future research. The main focus of the discussion concerns the phonetics and phonology of word-level prosody, given the limited information about prosody beyond the word in this part of the world. A typology of stress, tone, and mixed systems is presented that summarizes the main typological studies to date and suggests new, relevant parameters. The chapter further explores the most salient typological parameters in relation to geographic regions and linguistic families. The majority of South American languages appear to have only stress, followed by restricted tone systems. Finally, the chapter suggests directions for future research, emphasizing the need for more acoustic studies, the use of quantitative methods, and an approach within a framework of experimental or laboratory phonology.
  • Contact and south american languages
    Lyle Campbell, Thiago Chacon, John Elliott
    Handbook of Language Contact, 2020
  • Comparing rural multilingualism in lowland south America and western Africa
    Friederike Lüpke, Kristine Stenzel, Flora Dias Cabalzar, Thiago Chacon, Aline da Cruz, et al.
    Anthropological Linguistics, 2020
  • The place of particles among words, morphemes, and phrases in Kubeo
    Thiago Costa Chacon
    Boletim do Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi Ciencias Humanas, 2019
  • Grammatical relations in Kubeo
    Thiago Costa Chacon, Carol Genetti
    Typological Studies in Language, 2019
  • Arawak linguistic diversity in the Upper Rio Negro, on the basis of recordings from the 1950s
    Thiago Costa Chacon, Artur Garcia Gonçalves, Lucas Ferreira da Silva
    Forma Y Funcion, 2019
  • The evolution of subject-verb agreement in Eastern Tukanoan
    Thiago Costa Chacon, Lev Michael
    Journal of Historical Linguistics, 2018
  • The reconstruction of laryngealization in proto-Tukanoan
    Thiago Costa Chacon
    Brill S Studies in the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, 2016
  • A Revised proposal of proto-tukanoan consonants and tukanoan family classification
    Thiago Chacon
    International Journal of American Linguistics, 2014

RECENT SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS

  • Nasalidade contrastiva entre o Kubeo eo portuguÃĒs brasileiro
    G Marquetto, V Nobre, K da_Silva, P Barbosa, T Chacon
    CEGRAF Universidade Federal de GoiaĖ s , 2026
    2026
  • O lugar da teoria na descrição: a evolução da categoria de evidencialidade nas gramáticas da língua Tukano
    MCL Felix, TC Chacon
    LIAMES: Línguas Indígenas Americanas 25, 025012-025012 , 2025
    2025
  • An acoustic and articulatory key study of unvoiced coronal oral stops in Baniwa of Içana
    JV Rodriguez, T Chacón, R Alexandre, N Vallée, C Savariaux
    6th Phonetics and Phonology in Europe (PaPE 2025), 294-295 , 2025
    2025
  • Termos e usos de plantas silvestres entre os Kubeo no alto rio negro: uma análise morfológica e etnobotânica
    GF Barros, TC Chacon
    Ecolinguística: Revista brasileira de ecologia e linguagem (ECO-REBEL) 11 (1 … , 2025
    2025
  • Entre territórios e mundos: espacialidade e contracartografia kotiria e kubeo no alto rio Uaupés, Amazonas, Brasil
    P Rocha, TC Chacon
    Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas 19 (1), e20230042 , 2024
    2024
    Citations: 8
  • Une étude intra et inter-dialectale des voyelles du korebaju
    JAV Rodriguez, N Vallée, T Chacón, C Savariaux, S Gerber
    Actes des 35èmes Journées d'Études sur la Parole, 561-569 , 2024
    2024
  • An Intra-and Inter-Dialectal Study of Korebaju Vowels
    JV Rodriguez, N Vallée, T Chacon, C Savariaux, S Gerber
    SIGUL 2023-2nd Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA SIG on Under-resourced … , 2023
    2023
  • Deriving calibrations for Arawakan using archaeological evidence
    L Michael, F de Carvalho, T Chacon, K Rybka, A Sabogal, ...
    Interface Focus 13 (1) , 2023
    2023
    Citations: 10
  • Language, exogamy and ethnicity in the Upper Rio Negro region
    T Chacon, L Cayón
    Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America … , 2023
    2023
    Citations: 3
  • O português em adição ao multilinguismo do Alto rio Negro (Amazônia)
    TC Chacon
    I Seminário Viagens da Língua: Multilinguismo no Mundo Lusófono 1, 101-111 , 2023
    2023
  • Diversity, multilingualism and inter-ethnic relations in the long-term history of the Upper Rio Negro region of the Amazon
    L Cayón, T Chacon
    Interface Focus 13 (1), 20220050 , 2022
    2022
    Citations: 18
  • Interpreting mismatches between linguistic and genetic patterns among speakers of Tanimuka (Eastern Tukanoan) and Yukuna (Arawakan)
    L Arias, NQ Emlen, S Norder, N Julmi, M Lemus Serrano, T Chacon, ...
    Interface Focus 13 (1), 20220056 , 2022
    2022
    Citations: 9
  • Desana numerical symbols: An indigenous creation narrated by Diakuru and Kisibi
    KA Overmann, T Chacon, A Payne
    Written Language & Literacy 25 (2), 133-158 , 2022
    2022
    Citations: 1
  • Gender and Noun Class Markers in Kubeo (Tukanoan)
    TC Chacon
    Faits de Langues 52 (2), 11-49 , 2022
    2022
  • The Lenguas de Bolivia project: Background and further prospects
    M Crevels, P Muysken, TC Chacon
    Language change and linguistic diversity: Studies in honour of Lyle Campbell … , 2022
    2022
    Citations: 1
  • Language Change and Diversity at the Crossroads of Historical Linguistics, Language Documentation, and Linguistic Typology
    TC Chacon, NH Lee, WDL Silva
    Language Change and Linguistic Diversity: Studies in Honour of Lyle Campbell, 1 , 2022
    2022
    Citations: 1
  • Language change and linguistic diversity: studies in honour of Lyle Campbell
    WDL Silva, NH Lee, TC Chacon
    Edinburgh University Press , 2022
    2022
    Citations: 1
  • Resultado da 4ª Etapa
    TC Chacon, V Resende, C da Silva Pacheco
    UNIVERSIDADE DE BRASÍLIA , 2022
    2022
  • Glottalisation en korebaju: la question d’un trait mixte segmental et suprasegmental
    J Vega Rodriguez, N Vallée, T Chacón
    Proc. JEP 2022, 797-805 , 2022
    2022
  • Migration andTrade as drivers of Language Spread and Contact in Indigenous Latin America
    TC Chacon
    2022
    Citations: 6

MOST CITED SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS

  • A revised proposal of Proto-Tukanoan consonants and Tukanoan family classification
    T Chacon
    International Journal of American Linguistics 80 (3), 275-322 , 2014
    2014
    Citations: 101
  • A cross-linguistic database of phonetic transcription systems
    C Anderson, T Tresoldi, T Chacon, AM Fehn, M Walworth, R Forkel, ...
    Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting 4 (1), 21-53 , 2018
    2018
    Citations: 100
  • The phonology and morphology of Kubeo: The documentation, theory, and description of an Amazonian language
    TC Chacon
    [Honolulu]:[University of Hawaii at Manoa],[May 2012] , 2012
    2012
    Citations: 69
  • Conocimiento, historia y lugares sagrados. La formación del sistema regional del alto río Negro desde una visón interdisciplinar
    L Cayón, T Chacon
    Anuário Antropológico 39 (2), 201-236 , 2014
    2014
    Citations: 39
  • Considerações sobre a exogamia linguística no Noroeste Amazônico
    TC Chacon, LA Cayón
    Revista de Letras 6 (1/2) , 2013
    2013
    Citations: 33
  • Improved computational models of sound change shed light on the history of the Tukanoan languages
    CT Costa, L Johann-Mattis
    Вопросы языкового родства, 177-203 , 2015
    2015
    Citations: 30
  • On proto-languages and archaeological cultures: pre-history and material culture in the tukanoan family
    T Chacon
    Revista Brasileira de Linguística Antropológica 5 (1), 217-245 , 2013
    2013
    Citations: 25
  • Comparing rural multilingualism in lowland South America and western Africa
    F Lüpke, K Stenzel, FD Cabalzar, T Chacon, A da Cruz, B Franchetto, ...
    Anthropological Linguistics 62 (1), 3-57 , 2020
    2020
    Citations: 24
  • Arawakan and Tukanoan contacts in Northwest Amazonia prehistory
    T Chacon
    PAPIA Rev. Bras. Estud. Crioulos E Similares 27, 237-265 , 2017
    2017
    Citations: 23
  • Kubeo: Linguistic and cultural interactions in the Upper Rio Negro
    T Chacon
    Upper Rio Negro: Cultural and Linguistic Interaction in Northwestern … , 2013
    2013
    Citations: 19
  • Diversity, multilingualism and inter-ethnic relations in the long-term history of the Upper Rio Negro region of the Amazon
    L Cayón, T Chacon
    Interface Focus 13 (1), 20220050 , 2022
    2022
    Citations: 18
  • The reconstruction of laryngealization in Proto-Tukanoan
    T Chacon
    The phonetics and phonology of laryngeal features in Native American … , 2016
    2016
    Citations: 17
  • The evolution of subject-verb agreement<? br?> in Eastern Tukanoan
    TC Chacon, L Michael
    Journal of Historical Linguistics 8 (1), 59-94 , 2018
    2018
    Citations: 15
  • Deriving calibrations for Arawakan using archaeological evidence
    L Michael, F de Carvalho, T Chacon, K Rybka, A Sabogal, ...
    Interface Focus 13 (1) , 2023
    2023
    Citations: 10
  • A new look into Arawak-Tukanoan contact: the Yukuna-Tanimuka bidirectional hypothesis
    F Rose, T Chacon, M Lemus Serrano, N Eraso
    SSILA Annual Meeting, Austin , 2017
    2017
    Citations: 10
  • Interpreting mismatches between linguistic and genetic patterns among speakers of Tanimuka (Eastern Tukanoan) and Yukuna (Arawakan)
    L Arias, NQ Emlen, S Norder, N Julmi, M Lemus Serrano, T Chacon, ...
    Interface Focus 13 (1), 20220056 , 2022
    2022
    Citations: 9
  • Guia de pesquisa e documentação para o INDL: patrimônio cultural e diversidade linguística/pesquisa
    TC CHACON
    Brasília: Iphan , 2014
    2014
    Citations: 9
  • Entre territórios e mundos: espacialidade e contracartografia kotiria e kubeo no alto rio Uaupés, Amazonas, Brasil
    P Rocha, TC Chacon
    Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas 19 (1), e20230042 , 2024
    2024
    Citations: 8
  • Lexical and viewpoint aspect in Kubeo
    TC Chacon
    Conference on Indigenous Languages of Latin America IV, University of Texas , 2009
    2009
    Citations: 8
  • Migration andTrade as drivers of Language Spread and Contact in Indigenous Latin America
    TC Chacon
    2022
    Citations: 6