Itonama language

Itonama is a moribund language isolate spoken by the Itonama people in the Amazonian lowlands of north-eastern Bolivia. Greenberg’s (1987) classification of Itonama as Paezan, a sub-branch of Macro-Chibchan, remains unsupported and Itonama continues to be considered an isolate or unclassified language.

Itonama
Native toBolivia
RegionBeni Department
Ethnicity2,900 (2006)[1]
Native speakers
5 (2007)[1]
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3ito
Glottologiton1250[2]

It was spoken on the Itonomas River and Lake[3] in Beni Department.

Language contact

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Nambikwaran languages due to contact.[4]

Phonology

Vowels
Front Central Back
High i ɨ u
Mid e o
Low a

Diphthongs: /ai au/.

Consonants
Bilabial Alveolar Postalveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Stop Plain p t tʲ k ʔ
Ejective tʼ kʼ
Voiced b d
Affricate Plain tʃ
Ejective tʃʼ
Fricative s h
Nasal m n
Lateral l
Flap ɾ
Semivowel w j

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.

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).[5]

Vocabulary

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Itonama.[3]

glossItonama
onechash-káni
twochash-chupa
toothhuomóte
tonguepáchosníla
handmapára
womanubíka
waterhuanúhue
fireubári
moonchakakáshka
maizeudáme
jaguarótgu
houseúku
gollark: To abandon the claim, that is.
gollark: `/abandonclaim`
gollark: Sorry, network issues on my end.
gollark: It's a city in the end, though not an end city.
gollark: Do you like endermen? `/warp choruscity`.

See also

Further reading
  • Camp, E. L.; Liccardi, M. R. (1967). Itonama, castellano e inglés. (Vocabularios Bolivianos, 6.) Riberalta: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

References
  1. Itonama at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Itonama". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Classification of South American Indian languages. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center.
  4. Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho de Valhery (2016). Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas (Ph.D. dissertation) (2 ed.). Brasília: University of Brasília.
  5. Crevels, M. Who did what to whom in Magdalena. p. 3.
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