Kanamarí, or Katukina-Kanamari, is a
Katukinan language spoken by about 650 individuals in
Amazonas,
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
. It is considered
endangered
An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inv ...
.
The two principal varieties, Kanamari (Canamarí) and Katukina (Catuquina), are mutually intelligible, and have both been confused with neighboring languages with the same or similar names.
Synonyms and dialect names include ''Tshom-djapa, Tsohon-djapa, Wiri-dyapá, Pidá-dyapá, Kutiá-dyapá (Kadiu-diapa, Cutiadapa), Tucun-diapa, Bendiapa, Parawa.''
Etymology
The term ''Katukina'' is derived from the Proto-
Purus term *ka-tukanɨ, meaning ‘speaker of an indigenous language’. As a result, it is used to refer to a few different unrelated languages belonging to separate language families, including
Panoan and
Arawakan
Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient indigenous peoples in South America. Branc ...
:
*
Katukina (Arawakan)
*
Katukína (Panoan)
*
Catuquinarú (unclassified)
Phonology
Consonants
An alveolar lateral consonant /l/ may be realized as a retroflex lateral . A velar nasal sound is often heard when following after nasal vowels. A glottal stop can be heard before word-initial vowels. A word-final /k/ may also sound unreleased .
Vowels
/i/ and /u/ may be realized as approximant sounds and , when preceding another vowel.
Grammar
The syntax of Kanamarí is characterized by
ergative–absolutive alignment
In linguistic typology, ergative–absolutive alignment is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the single argument ("subject") of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb, and differently from the agent of a tra ...
.
The absolutive argument (i.e. the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs) is unmarked for case, and usually appears following the verb phrase.
If the absolutive argument is a pronoun, it is represented by its free-standing form.
The ergative argument (i.e. the agent of transitive verbs) is marked for genitive case. If the agent is a pronoun, it is represented by a genitive prefix (as in ''no-ti paiko'' 'you killed grandfather' above). If the agent is a full noun, it is linked to the verb with the case marker ''na'', which phonologically attaches to the verb:
References
*Queixalós, Francesc 2012. The Katukina-Kanamari antipassive. In: Gilles Authier and Katharina Haude (eds). Ergativity, Valency and Voice. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. (pp. 227–258)
External links
Catuquina(
Intercontinental Dictionary Series
The Intercontinental Dictionary Series (commonly abbreviated as IDS) is a large database of topical vocabulary lists in various world languages. The general editor of the database is Bernard Comrie of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary A ...
)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kanamari language
Languages of Brazil
Katukinan languages
Indigenous languages of Western Amazonia