Piapoco language

Piapoco is an Arawakan language of Colombia and Venezuela.

Piapoco
Cháse
Native toColombia, Venezuela
Native speakers
6,400 (2001–2007)[1]
Arawakan
  • Northern
    • Upper Amazon
      • Western Nawiki
        • Piapoko languages
          • Piapoco
Language codes
ISO 639-3pio
Glottologpiap1246  Piapoco[2]
pona1251  Ponares – undemonstrated[3]

A "Ponares" language is inferred from surnames, and may have been Piapoco or Achagua.

History

Piapoco is a branch of the Arawak language, which also includes Achagua and Tariana.[4] Piapoco is considered a Northern Arawak language.[5] There are only about 3,000 Piapoco speakers left today. These people live in the Meta, Vichada, and Guaviare rivers in Colombia[6] Piapoco speakers also reside in Venezuela.[7] It is an endangered language.[7]

Geography/Background

The Piapocos come from the larger tribe, the Piaroa, who are indigenous to the Amazon rain forest.[8] The Piapoco people originally lived in the midsection of Rio Guaviare, later moving in the 18th century to avoid settlers, missionaries, and others.[9]

Grammar

A Piapoco-Spanish dictionary containing 2,500 words was written by Deloris Klumpp, in which botanical identification of plants were captured, although not all.[5] The Piapoco language follows the following grammatical rules: plural suffix -nai used for animates only, derivational suffixes masculine -iri, feminine -tua, suffix -mi 'late, defunct,' nominalizing -si, declarative mood marker -ka.[5] Piapoco is unique in that it seems to be a nominative-accusative language.[5] There are eighteen segmental phonemes, fourteen consonant and four vowels in the Piapoco language.[10]

Bilingualism

The word Piapoco is a Spanish nickname in reference to the toucan.[6] Most Piapoco also speak Spanish.[9] Speakers who have had less contact with Spanish speakers more often pronounce the phoneme "s" as a voiceless interdental fricative.[10] Younger speakers of the Piapoco language tend to eliminate the "h" more than older speakers due to their contact with the Spanish language.[10]

When a large portion of people come in contact with another language and are competent in it, their language gradually becomes more like the other.[11] This allows for a gradual convergence, where grammar and semantics of one language begin to replicate the other.[11]

gollark: Or use some other magic thing to "see" inside them, if that counts.
gollark: Well, you can still heat up their outside bit. Or argue that you can see some parts of their body which shouldn't be filled with water. Or command their skeleton if they have an exposed broken bone somehow.
gollark: smh not using radians
gollark: If you are significantly hotter than this you might have coronavirus, in which case you should self-isolate.
gollark: Despite only making up 10% of the population, criminals commit 100% of crimes in the US.

References
  1. Piapoco at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Piapoco". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Ponares". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  4. Seifart, F (2012). "Causative Marking in Resígaro (Arawakan): A Descriptive and Comparative Perspective". International Journal of American Linguistics. 78 (3): 369–384. doi:10.1086/665917.
  5. Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (1 January 1998). "Review of Vocabulario Piapoco-Español, ; Bosquejo del Macuna: Aspectos de la cultura material de los macunas--Fonología; Gramática, , , ; Gramática Pedagógica del Cuiba-Wámonae: Lengua indígena de la familia lingüística guahiba de los llanos orientales". International Journal of American Linguistics. 64 (2): 168–173. doi:10.1086/466355. JSTOR 1265983.
  6. Klumpp, James; Burquest, Donald A. (1 January 1983). "Relative Clauses in Piapoco". International Journal of American Linguistics. 49 (4): 388–399. doi:10.1086/465801. JSTOR 1265211.
  7. "Did you know Piapoco is threatened?". Endangered Languages.
  8. Piapoco Indians. (n.d.). Retrieved March 09, 2017, from http://www.indian-cultures.com/cultures/piapoco-indians/ Archived 2019-02-26 at the Wayback Machine
  9. Flowers, N. M. (n.d.). Piapoco. Retrieved March 09, 2017, from http://www.everyculture.com/South-America/Piapoco.html
  10. Klumpp, D. (1990). Piapoco Grammar. 1-136. Retrieved March 9, 2017, from https://www.sil.org/resources/archives/18810.
  11. Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (1 January 2003). "Mechanisms of Change in Areal Diffusion: New Morphology and Language Contact". Journal of Linguistics. 39 (1): 1–29. doi:10.1017/s0022226702001937. JSTOR 4176787.
  • Klumpp, Deloris A. (2019). Hollenbach, Barbara E. (ed.). A Grammar of Piapoco. SIL eBook 71. SIL International.


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