Nonuya (''Nononotá, Nyonuhu, Nonuña, Achiote)'' is a Witotoan language formerly spoken in Colombia and Peru that is now nearly extinct.

Genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...

, disease, and forced migration caused the Sparrowhawk and Backpacker tribes to form families with the Andoke and the Muinane to create the Nonuya community. Most Nonuya have Muinane and Spanish as their native languages. There are no surviving Nonuya people with Nononotá as their mother tongue as the last native speaker died in 2003. However, the Nonuya community has recently reestablished itself, and is attempting to revitalize its culture through revitalizing its language. The Nonuya use the available documentation created by the last native speakers between 1973 and 2007, which include prayers, songs, and a lexicon, to relearn the language. These documents are accessible today in audio files and transcripts which can be used for practical spelling.

Phonology

Some of the only linguistic research on Nonuya was on its phonological and phonetic features, Nonuya has 6 vowels and 15 consonants. Nonuya has no nasal vowels, similar to its predecessor Witotoan. Nonuya's six vowel system is typical of Northwest Amazonian languages. Some sources also suggest that Nonuya has two implosive sounds ( and /ɓ/), and distinguish labialised consonants.

Grammar

Not much is known about Nonuya grammar as, until recently, the only linguistic studies done on Nonuya were on phonetic/phonological analysis but it can be inferred through the typical features known to Witotoan languages and the 1953 lexicon.

Features of Witotoan languages

Source: * All Wititoan languages are nominative-accusative with agreement shown on the heads of phrases ( head marking) and some elements of agreement marked on the dependent element of a phrase (

dependent marking A dependent-marking language has grammatical markers of agreement and case government between the words of phrases that tend to appear more on dependents than on heads. The distinction between head-marking and dependent-marking was first explored ...

). * They are predominantly agglutinating with some fusion and mostly suffixing. Though there are a few cases of prefixes. * Syntactic functions are expressed using cross-referencing on the verb and case marking * Word order is typically Agent Object Verb ( SOV), but it may change, depending on context, to SVO * Pronouns distinguish between male/female singular, male/female dual, and male/female plural

Cases

There are six syntactical cases and seven locative cases in Nonuya:

nominative In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants of E ...

accusative In grammar, the accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "her", " ...

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

dative In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a drink". In this exampl ...

ablative In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages. It is used to indicate motion away from something, make comparisons, and serve various o ...

locative In grammar, the locative case ( ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. In languages using it, the locative case may perform a function which in English would be expressed with such prepositions as "in", "on", "at", and " ...

, and

instrumental An instrumental or instrumental song is music without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through Semantic change, semantic widening, a broader sense of the word s ...

. The locative case includes : "in", or : "with" used as both "in the company of" and instrumental, wan can also be used in some contexts to mean "in addition". : "for" (interest, aim, duration), : "due to, in sight of", : "until" "while" "according to" "all together", : "in a pair" "from among a group" and , whose form is difficult to analyse but is recorded as meaning "all together", "with"

Lexicon

The firs
wordlist of Nonuya
was created by Marquis Robert de Wavrin and Paul River in 1953 and included 394 words and expressions. The document compares Nonuya, Ocaina, and Witotoa and attempts to record the endangered language for future revival. {, class="wikitable" , + !English !Nonuya !Ocaina !Witotoa , - , Good morning , , {{Lang, oca, wo(h)ə(ü)kaj(w)ə(ü)ra , māreho(wi) , - , Yesterday , bohōf(w)ə , ə(ü)tǒ , nayfotomonay , - , Man , hǒkká , hōh'ə , uey(ma)

References

Witotoan languages Languages of Colombia Languages of Peru Endangered Indigenous languages of the Americas Articles citing ISO change requests