The Borôroan languages of Brazil and Bolivia are
Borôro and the extinct
Umotína, Kovareka,
Kuruminaka and
Otuke. They are sometimes considered to form part of the proposed
Macro-Jê language family,
though this has been disputed.
They are called the Borotuke languages by
Mason (1950), a
portmanteau
In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together. of
Bororo
The Bororo are indigenous people of Brazil, living in the state of Mato Grosso. They also extended into Bolivia and the Brazilian state of Goiás. The Western Bororo live around the Jauru and Cabaçal rivers. The Eastern Bororo (Orarimogodoge) l ...
and
Otuke.
Languages
The relationship between the languages is,
*
Umotina ''(†)''
*Otuke–Bororo
**
Borôro
**?
Bororo of Cabaçal ''(†)''
**
Otuke ''(†)'',
Gorgotoqui ''(†)'' ?
**
Covareca–
Kuruminaka ''(†)''
Gorgotoqui may have also been a Bororoan language.
[Combès, Isabelle. 2010. ''Diccionario étnico: Santa Cruz la Vieja y su entorno en el siglo XVI''. Cochabamba: Itinera-rios/Instituto Latinoamericano de Misionología. (Colección Scripta Autochtona, 4.)][Combès, Isabelle. 2012. Susnik y los gorgotoquis: Efervescencia étnica en la Chiquitania (Oriente boliviano), p. 201–220. ''Indiana'', v. 29. Berlín. ]
See
Otuke for various additional varieties of the
Chiquito Plains in Bolivia which may have been dialects of it, such as Kovare and Kurumina.
There are other recorded groups that may have spoken languages or dialects closer to
Borôro, such as Aravirá, but nothing is directly known about these languages:
*Aravirá – extinct language once spoken on the
Cabaçal River and
Sepotuba River in Mato Grosso according to Loukotka (1968)
Orari (Eastern Borôro, Orarimugodoge), listed by Loukotka as a language that was spoken on the
Valhas River,
Garças River, and
Madeira River
The Madeira River ( ) is a major waterway in South America. It is estimated to be in length, while the Madeira-Mamoré is estimated near or in length depending on the measuring party and their methods. The Madeira is the biggest tributary of ...
in Mato Grosso, is another name for Bororo.
Bororo of Cabaçal, which has been documented by
Johann Natterer
Johann Natterer (9 November 1787 – 17 June 1843) was an Austrian natural history, naturalist and List of explorers, explorer. He was the son of royal falconer Joseph Natterer and along with his brother Joseph Natterer (1786–1852) took a keen i ...
and
Francis de Castelnau, has been identified by Camargo (2014) as a separate language distinct from Bororo proper.
[Camargo, Gonçalo Ochoa. 2014. ''Boe ewadaru = A língua bororo : breve histórico e elementos de gramática''. ]Campo Grande
Campo Grande (, ) is a city in the Central-West Region, Brazil, central and western Regions of Brazil, region of Brazil, Capital city, capital of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Historically a Fortification, stronghold of Separatism, separatists ...
, MS: Universidade Católica Dom Bosco (UCDB).
Vocabulary
Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items.
:
Proto-language
For a list of Proto-Bororo reconstructions by , see the corresponding
Portuguese article.
External relations
The Bororoan languages are commonly thought to be part of the
Macro-Jê language family.
[,]
Ceria & Sandalo (1995) note parallels between Bororo and the
Guaicuruan languages.
Kaufman (1994) has suggested a relationship with the
Chiquitano language, which Nikulin (2020) considers to be a sister of
Macro-Jê.
Furthermore, Nikulin (2019) has suggested that Bororoan has a relationship with the
Cariban and
Kariri languages:
[Nikulin, Andrey V]
The classification of the languages of the South American Lowlands: State-of-the-art and challenges / Классификация языков востока Южной Америки
Illič-Svityč (Nostratic) Seminar / Ностратический семинар, October 17, 2019.
:
An automated computational analysis (
ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)
[Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013. ]
ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013)
'. also found lexical similarities between Bororoan and Cariban.
Language contact
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the
Guato,
Karib,
Kayuvava,
Nambikwara, and
Tupi language families due to contact.
Cariban influence in Bororoan languages was due to the later southward expansion of Cariban speakers into Bororoan territory. Ceramic technology was also adopted from Cariban speakers.
Similarly, Cariban borrowings are also present in the
Karajá languages. Karajá speakers had also adopted ceramic technology from Cariban speakers.
Similarities with Cayuvava are due to the expansion of Bororoan speakers into the
Chiquitania
Chiquitania ("Chiquitos" or "Gran Chiquitania") is a region of tropical savannas in the Santa Cruz Department in eastern Bolivia.
Geography
"Chiquitos" is the colonial name for what is now essentially five of the six provinces that make up the ...
region.
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bororoan Languages
Macro-Jê languages
Language families
Languages of Brazil
Indigenous languages of South America (Central)
Mamoré–Guaporé linguistic area