The Peba–Yaguan language family (also Yaguan, Peban, Yáwan) is located in the northwestern
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...
, but today Yagua is the only remaining spoken language of the family.
Internal structure
Paul Rivet
Paul Rivet (7 May 1876, Wasigny, Ardennes – 21 March 1958) was a French ethnologist known for founding the Musée de l'Homme in 1937. In his professional work, Rivet is known for his theory that South America was originally populated in pa ...
had suggested that the Peba–Yaguan family divided into two branches, with
Yameo in one branch, and
Peba and
Yagua in the other. There is extremely little documentation of Yameo and Peba, both of which are now extinct, though the town
Pebas on the Amazon River clearly takes its name from this group of people. The available documentation is largely due to the efforts of early Catholic missionaries, summarized by
Paul Rivet
Paul Rivet (7 May 1876, Wasigny, Ardennes – 21 March 1958) was a French ethnologist known for founding the Musée de l'Homme in 1937. In his professional work, Rivet is known for his theory that South America was originally populated in pa ...
.
Loukotka (1968) also lists Masamae (Mazán, Parara), spoken the
Mazán River in
Loreto Department, Peru. It is most closely related to
Yameo.
Jolkesky (2016) groups
Peba and
Yameo in one branch, and
Yagua in another separate branch.
[Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho De Valhery. 2016. ]
Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas
'. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Brasília
The University of Brasília ( pt, Universidade de Brasília, UnB) is a federal public university in Brasília, the capital of Brazil. It was founded in 1960 and has since consistently been named among the top five Brazilian universities and the ...
.
Classification
There is no sound scientific evidence yet that the Peba–Yaguan family is related to any other family or stock of South America (in particular, there is no evidence for grouping it with
Cariban languages
The Cariban languages are a family of languages indigenous to northeastern South America. They are widespread across northernmost South America, from the mouth of the Amazon River to the Colombian Andes, and they are also spoken in small pocket ...
). There has likely been contact between the Yaguas and
Bora–Witotoan peoples, perhaps particularly during the era of the rubber-trade; this may account for some structural similarities between the languages (Payne, forthcoming). Kaufman (2007) includes
Sabela,
Taushiro, and
Omurano in his
Yawan family.
Language contact
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the
Kwaza,
Zaparoan, and
Nambikwaran language families due to contact.
Vocabulary
Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items.
:
Further reading
*Powlison, P. (1995). Diccionario Yagua - Castellano. (Serie Lingüística Peruana, 35). Lima: Ministerio de Educación and Summer Institute of Linguistics.
References
* Payne, Doris L. forthcoming. ''Source of the Yagua classifier system''.
Catholic Encyclopedia article
{{DEFAULTSORT:Peba-Yaguan languages
Language families