Itonama language
Dormant language of Bolivia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Itonama (Itonama: sihnipadara '1PL.EXCL-word'[2]) is an extinct language isolate once spoken by the Itonama people in the Amazonian lowlands of north-eastern Bolivia. It was spoken on the Itonomas River and Lake[3] in Beni Department.
Geographic distribution
The Itonama have resided in their current area, corresponding to the current Mamoré and Iténez Provinces in Beni Department, since they were contacted by Spaniards in the 17th century. The last speakers of Itonama resided in the town of Magdalena, located on the western bank of the Itonama River (a tributary of the Iténez River), located in Iténez Province.[2]
History
Hardly anything of the original Itonama culture remains today, as they have been Christian for the past 300 years. In 2023, only a few elderly people could remember a few words and phrases of the language in Magdalena, thereby rendering Itonama "virtually extinct". In spite of the fact that Itonama has no speakers, a total of 1,249 people claimed to speak the language in 2012.[2]: 483
Language contact
Marcelo Jolkesky (2016) identifies lexical similarities with the Nambikwaran languages, which he postulates is due to contact.[4]
Classification
In his classification of South American languages, American ethnologist Daniel Garrison Brinton (1891) left Itonama unclassified,[5] followed in this respect by Alexander Francis Chamberlain (1910, 1913)[6][7] and classified as an isolate by Czech linguist Čestmír Loukotka (1968).[8]: 164–165 However, Clements Markham (1910) classified the Itonama as a branch of the Arawakan Moxo,[9]: 166 and Loukotka's earlier 1935 classification identified influence from Arawakan languages.[2] Morris Swadesh (1959, 1962) grouped Itonama with the Quechuan languages. Joseph Greenberg's 1987 classification in his book Language in the Americas grouped Itonama as a member of his universally rejected[10] "Amerind" language family, within his "Chibchan-Paezan" subgroup.[11][2]
Phonology
Vowels
Diphthongs are /ai au/ ⟨ay aw⟩.[2]
Consonants
The postalveolar affricates /tʃ tʃʼ/ have alveolar allophones [ts tsʼ]. Variation occurs between speakers, and even within the speech of a single person.
The semivowel /w/ is realized as a bilabial fricative [β] when preceded and followed by identical vowels.[2]
Morphology
Itonama is a polysynthetic, head-marking, verb-initial language with an accusative alignment system along with an inverse subsystem in independent clauses, and straightforward accusative alignment in dependent clauses.
Nominal morphology lacks case declension and adpositions and so is simpler than verbal morphology (which has body-part and location incorporation, directionals, evidentials, verbal classifiers, among others).[12]
Vocabulary
The forms cited here are from the Intercontinental Dictionary Series (IDS),[13] which takes its data from Camp and Liccardi (1967).
gloss Itonama (IDS) one u-kʼaʔne two -tʃupa tooth oh-womotʼe tongue oh-potʃosnila hand uh-maʔpara woman wabɨʔka water wanuʔwe fire u-bari moon u-ʔtʲahka-ʔkaʔka maize u-tʃuʔu, kanasbɨstʃa house u-ku
See also
Further reading
- Camp, E. L.; Liccardi, M. R. (1967). Itonama, castellano e inglés. (Vocabularios Bolivianos, 6.) Riberalta: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
