Yaminawa language
Panoan language of western Amazonia
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Yaminawa (Yaminahua) is a Panoan language of western Amazonia. It is spoken by the Yaminawá and some related peoples.
c. 400 uncontacted speakers of Yora (2007)
-
Mainline Panoan
- Nawa
- Headwaters
- Yaminawa
- Headwaters
- Nawa
| Yaminawa | |
|---|---|
| Yaminahua | |
| Native to | Peru, Bolivia, Brazil |
| Ethnicity | Yaminawá and related peoples |
Native speakers | 2,729 (2006–2011)[1] c. 400 uncontacted speakers of Yora (2007) |
Panoan
| |
| Dialects | |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  Bolivia |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | yaa |
| Glottolog | yami1255 Yaminawa Complex |
| ELP | Yaminawa |
Yaminawa constitutes an extensive dialect cluster. Attested dialects are two or more Brazilian Yaminawa dialects, Peruvian Yaminawa, Chaninawa, Chitonawa, Mastanawa (=Nastanawa), Parkenawa (= Yora or "Nawa"), Shanenawa (Xaninaua, = Katukina de Feijó), Sharanawa (= Marinawa), Shawannawa (= Arara), Yawanawá, Yaminawa-arara (obsolescent; very similar to Shawannawa/Arara), Nehanáwa†).[2] Xinane Yura, a recently discovered variety, is spoken by a group contacted in Kampa and Envira River Isolated Peoples Indigenous Territory, Acre, Brazil during the 2010s.[3]
Very few Yaminawá speak Spanish or Portuguese, though the Shanenawa have mostly shifted to Portuguese.[4] Other sources report that the Yamináwa have switched entirely to Portuguese and no longer use their original language.[5]
Phonology
The vowels of Yaminawa are /a, i, ɯ, u/. /i, ɯ, u/ can also be heard as [ɪ, ɨ, o].[6] Sharanawa, Yaminawa, and Yora have nasalized counterparts for each of the vowels, and demonstrate contrastive nasalization.[7]
[l] is heard as an allophone of /ɾ/. /j/ can also be heard as a nasal [ɲ].
Yawanawá has a similar phonemic inventory to Yaminawa, but uses a voiced bilabial fricative /β/ in place of the voiceless bilabial fricative /ɸ/.[8] Yawanawá and Sharanahua have an additional phoneme, the voiced labio-velar approximant /w/.[8][9] Shanewana has a labiodental fricative /f/ instead of /ɸ/.[10]
Yaminawa has contrastive tone, with two surface tones, high (H) and low (L).[6]
Grammar
Yaminawa is a polysynthetic, primarily suffixing language that also uses compounding, nasalization, and tone alternations in word-formation. Yaminawa exhibits split ergativity; nouns and third person pronouns pattern along ergative-absolutive lines, while first and second person pronouns pattern along nominative-accusative lines. Yaminawa verbal morphology is extensive, encoding affective (emotional) meanings and categories like associated motion. Yaminawa also has a set of switch reference enclitics that encode same or different subject relationships as well as aspectual relationships between the dependent (marked) clause and the main clause.[6]
