Yaminawa Language
Yaminawa (Yaminahua) is a Panoan language of western Amazonia.
It is spoken by the Yaminawá and some related peoples.
| Yaminawa | |
|---|---|
| Yaminahua | |
| Native to | Peru, Bolivia, Brazil |
| Ethnicity | Yaminawá and related peoples |
Native speakers | 2,729 (2006–2011) Est. 400 uncontacted speakers of Yora (2007) |
Panoan
| |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  Bolivia |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Variously:yaa – Yaminawaywn – Yawanawámcd – Sharanawaswo – Shaninawamts – Yora |
| Glottolog | yami1255 |
| ELP | Yaminawa |
| Shanenawa | |
Yaminawa constitutes an extensive dialect cluster. Attested dialects are two or more Brazilian Yaminawa dialects, Peruvian Yaminawa, Chaninawa, Chitonawa, Mastanawa, Parkenawa (= Yora or "Nawa"), Shanenawa (Xaninaua, = Katukina de Feijó), Sharanawa (= Marinawa), Shawannawa (= Arara), Yawanawá, Yaminawa-arara (obsolescent; very similar to Shawannawa/Arara), Nehanawa†).
Very few Yaminawá speak Spanish or Portuguese, though the Shanenawa have mostly shifted to Portuguese.
Phonology
The vowels of Yaminawa are /a, i, ɯ, u/. /i, ɯ, u/ can also be heard as [ɪ, ɨ, o]. Sharanawa, Yaminawa, and Yora have nasalized counterparts for each of the vowels, and demonstrate contrastive nasalization.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | p | t | k | |||
| Affricate | t͡s | t͡ʃ | ||||
| Fricative | ɸ | s | ʂ | ʃ | h | |
| Nasal | m | n | ||||
| Approximant | (l) | j | w | |||
| Flap | ɾ |
[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/. Yawanawá and Sharanahua have an additional phoneme, the voiced labio-velar approximant /w/. Shanewana has a labiodental fricative /f/ instead of /ɸ/.
Yaminawa has contrastive tone, with two surface tones, high (H) and low (L).
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.
Notes
External links
- Yaminahua language dictionary online from IDS
- Sharanahua Language Collection of Pierre Déléage (includes myths, shamanistic songs, and ceremonial songs) at the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA).
- Yaminahua (Intercontinental Dictionary Series)
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