Taushiro language
Language isolate of the Peruvian Amazon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Taushiro, also known as Pinche or Pinchi, is a nearly extinct possible language isolate of the Peruvian Amazon near Ecuador. In 2000 SIL counted one speaker in an ethnic population of 20. Documentation was done in the mid-1970s by Nectalí Alicea. The last living speaker of Taushiro, Amadeo García García, was profiled in The New York Times in 2017.[3]
The first glossary of Taushiro contained 200 words and was collected by Daniel Velie in 1971.[3]
Classification
Following Tovar (1961), Loukotka (1968),[4] and Tovar (1984), Kaufman (1994) notes that while Taushiro has been linked to the Zaparoan languages, it shares greater lexical correspondences with Kandoshi and especially with Omurano. In 2007 he classified Taushiro and Omurano (but not Kandoshi) as Saparo–Yawan languages.
Jolkesky (2016) also notes that there are lexical similarities with Tequiraca and Leco.[5]
Phonology
Consonants
Taushiro has 17 phomenic consonants.
Vowels
Nasality
Nasality spreads leftward within a word, only affecting glides /w/ and /j/.
Tone
Taushiro has two surface-level tones, high and low. The mora is the tone-bearing unit.
Phonotactics
Known syllable shapes include V(ː), CV(ː), and CV(ː)C, with /ʔ/ as the only possible coda. Words apparently must be at least bimoraic.[6]
Grammar
Word order in Taushiro is verb–subject–object.[7]
Amadeo García García
In June 2015, the sole remaining native speaker, Amadeo García García (born c. 1949, Gómez Caño)[6] was residing in "Intuto on the Tigre River in the northeastern Peruvian region of Loreto." Zachary O’Hagan did targeted field work with him on topics such as ethnohistory, genealogy, sociocultural practices, lexicon, and grammar.[8]
As of December 2017 government linguists from Peru’s Ministry of Culture, working with Amadeo, have created a database of 1,500 Taushiro words, 27 stories, and three songs.[3]
Further reading
- Alicea Ortiz, Nectalí (2008) [1975]. Vocabulario taushiro. Datos Etno-Lingüísticos (in Spanish and Taushiro). Vol. 22. Lima: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
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