Nambikwara language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Nambikwara, Nambikuára | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Mato Grosso, Brazil | |
| Total speakers: | ~1,200 | |
| Language family: | American Language Isolate Nambikwara, Nambikuára |
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | nab | |
| ISO 639-3: | nab | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
The Nambikwara language (also called Nambikuára, Nhambikwara or Nambiquara) is an indigenous language of Brazil, spoken by about 1200 Nambikwara people in the Mato Grosso state. The language is considered an isolate although Joseph Greenberg has included it in his controversial Amerind family in the Gê-Pano-Carib phylum[1]. Nambikwara is in vigorous use in the Nambikwara communities and in spite of having few speakers the language is not endangered. The name Nambikwara is of Tupi origin.
There are three dialect groups of Nambikwara which are mutually unintelligible. The northern language has five subgroups (Lakondê, Latundê, Mamaindê, Nagarotê and Tawandê), the southern language has eleven subgroups (among them Campo, Manduka, Galera and Guaporé[2]) and the Sabanê language has no subgroupings[3].
Most Nambikwara are monolingual but some young men speak Portuguese[4]. Especially the men of the Sabanê group are trilingual speaking both Portuguese and northern Nambikwara.[5]
Contents |
[edit] Phonology
Nambikwara phonology is complex: it distinguishes aspirated, glottalized and plain consonants, and also has two different phonation types of vowels, nasal vowels and three tones.
[edit] Vowels
Nambikwara (Kitãulhu southern dialect) distinguishes 19 different vowel sounds[6]. There are six basic vowel qualities:
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close (high) |
i | u |
| Mid | ɛ | o |
| Open (low) |
a | ʌ |
Aside from /ʌ/ these have laryngealized counterparts /ḭ ɛ̰ a̰ o̰ ṵ/, and /o/ further aside, nasal counterparts /ĩ ɛ̃ ã ũ/, as well as laryngealized nasal counterparts /ḭ̃ ɛ̰̃ ã̰ ṵ̃/.
[edit] Tone
Each vowel is marked for either falling, rising or low tone; the three tones are marked with superscript numbers: 1, 2 and 3 respectively.
[edit] Consonants
Nambikwara (Kitãulhu southern dialect) distinguishes 29 different consonant phonemes. The language also contains a 30th consonant, an implosive alveolar stop [ɗ] which is only used by elderly people and is becoming gradually obsolete[7].
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central | Lateral | Plain | Labialized | |||||
| Plosives | Plain | p [p] | t [t] | k [k] | kw [kʷ] | x [ʔ] | ||
| Aspirated | ph [pʰ] | th [tʰ] | kh [kʰ] | kwh [kʷʰ] | ||||
| Glottalized | tx [tʔ] | kx [kʔ] | ||||||
| Affricate | Plain | j [tʃ] | ||||||
| Fricatives | Plain | f [ɸ] | s [s] | h [h] | ||||
| Glottalized | fx [ɸʔ] | sx [sʔ] | hx [hʔ] | |||||
| Sonorants | Plain | m [m] | n [n] | l [l] | y [j] | w [w] | ||
| Aspirated | wh [ʍʰ] | |||||||
| Glottalized | mx [ʔm] | nx [ʔn] | lx [ʔl] | yx [ʔj] | wx [ʔw] | |||
[edit] Grammar
The grammar of Nambikwara is polysynthetic and mostly suffixing. It uses active-stative alignment. Its basic word order is SOV. It has four word classes: verbs, nouns, adverbs and interrogative pronouns. Nambikwara has a complex system for expressing evidentiality.
[edit] References
[edit] Bibliography
- Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
- Kroeker, Menno (2001) A Descriptive Grammar of Nambikuara, International Journal of American Linguistics, Vol. 67 No. 1. January. pp. 1 - 87.
- Kroeker, Menno (1975) Thematic Linkage in Nambiquara. The thread of discourse by Joseph E. Grimes The Hague, Mouton.
- Lowe, Ivan (1972) "On the relation of formal to sememic matrices with illustrations from Nambiquara". Foundations of Language 8, 360-390.
- McQuown, Norman and Joseph Greenberg (1960) "In Sol Tax: Aboriginal Languages of Native America". Current Anthropology 1, 431-436.
- Price, P. David (1976) "Southern Nambiquara Phonology", International Journal of American Linguistics, Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 338-348
- Telles, Stella & Leo Wetzels (2006) "The System of Evidentiality in Lakondê (Nambikwara)", in Whats in a Verb? Studies in the Verbal Morphology of the languages of the Americas Grażyna J. Rowicka & Eithne B. Carlin (Eds.). LOT: Utrecht.[1]
- Ethnologue on Nambikwara
- SIL Brazil data on Nambikwara
