Itonama language
Dormant language of Bolivia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Itonama (Itonama: sihnipadara[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.
In Magdalena town on the western bank of the Itonama River (a tributary of the Iténez River), located in Iténez Province, only a few elderly people remember a few words and phrases.[4]: 483
Language contact
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Nambikwaran languages due to contact.[5]
An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)[6] found lexical similarities between Itonama and Movima, likely due to contact.
Phonology
Vowels
Diphthongs are /ai au/ ⟨ay aw⟩.
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).[7]
Vocabulary
The forms cited here are from the Intercontinental Dictionary Series (IDS),[8] 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.
