Yaminawa (Yaminahua) is a

Panoan language Panoan (also Pánoan, Panoano, Panoana, Páno) is a family of languages spoken in Peru, western Brazil, and Bolivia. It is possibly a branch of a larger Pano–Tacanan family. Genetic relations The Panoan family is generally believed to be relat ...

of western Amazonia. It is spoken by the

Yaminawá The Yaminawá (Iaminaua, JaminawaYawanawa'') are an indigenous people who live in Acre (Brazil), Madre de Dios (Peru) and Pando ( Bolivia). Their homeland is Acre, Brazil. Name The Yaminawá translated to "people of the axe." They are als ...

and some related peoples. Yaminawa constitutes an extensive

dialect cluster A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...

. 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''^†).David Fleck, 2013,
Panoan Languages and Linguistics
', Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History #99 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 �, ɨ, o Sharanawa, Yaminawa, and Yora have nasalized counterparts for each of the vowels, and demonstrate contrastive nasalization. is heard as an allophone of /ɾ/. /j/ can also be heard as a nasal . Yawanawá has a similar phonemic inventory to Yaminawa, but uses a

voiced bilabial fricative The voiced bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is B. The official symbol is the G ...

in place of the

voiceless bilabial fricative The voiceless bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . Features Features of the voiceless bilabial fricative: Occ ...

. Yawanawá and Sharanahua have an additional phoneme, the

voiced labio-velar approximant Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer ...

. Shanewana has a labiodental fricative instead of . Yaminawa has contrastive tone, with two surface tones, high (H) and low (L).Faust, Norma and Eugene Loos. (2002). ''Gramática de la lengua yaminahua''. Serie lingüística peruana, no. 51. Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.

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 IDSSharanahua 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 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 An ...

) {{DEFAULTSORT:Yaminahua Language Panoan languages Indigenous languages of Western Amazonia Languages of Bolivia Languages of Peru Languages of Brazil