The Piaroa–Saliban, also known as Saliban (in

spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

: ''Sálivan''), are a small proposed

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...

of the middle

Orinoco Basin The Orinoco Basin is the part of South America drained by the Orinoco river and its tributaries. The Orinoco watershed covers an area of about 990000 km2, making it the third largest in South America, covering most of Venezuela and eastern p ...

, which forms an independent island within an area of

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

and Colombia (northern ''llanos'') dominated by peoples of Carib and Arawakan affiliation. Betoi may be related.

Languages

Piaroa The Piaroa people, known among themselves as the ''Huottüja'' or ''De'aruhua'', are a pre-Columbian South American indigenous ethnic group of the middle Orinoco Basin in present-day Colombia and Venezuela, living in an area larger than Belgium ...

and Wirö (or "Maco") form a Piaroan branch of the family. The extinct Ature language, once spoken on the

Orinoco River The Orinoco () is one of the longest rivers in South America at . Its drainage basin, sometimes known as the Orinoquia, covers , with 76.3 percent of it in Venezuela and the remainder in Colombia. It is the fourth largest river in the wor ...

near the waterfalls of Atures, Venezuela, is unattested but was said to be 'little different' from Saliba, and so may have formed a Saliban branch of the family.

Language contact

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Andoke–Urekena,

Arawak The Arawak are a group of indigenous peoples of northern South America and of the Caribbean. Specifically, the term "Arawak" has been applied at various times to the Lokono of South America and the Taíno, who historically lived in the Great ...

, Máku, Tukano, and

Yaruro The Yaruro people (or Pumé, according to their self-determination) are a Circum-Caribbean indigenous people, native to the ecoregion of Llanos in Venezuela, located west of the Orinoco River.

language families due to contact. Lozano (2014:212) has also noted similarities between the Saliba-Hodi and

Arawakan languages 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 ...

External relations

Zamponi (2017) notes resemblances between the extinct

Betoi language Betoi (''Betoy'') or Betoi-Jirara is an extinct language of Colombia and Venezuela, south of the Apure River near the modern border with Colombia. The names Betoi and Jirara are those of two of its peoples/dialects; the language proper has no kno ...

and Piaroa–Saliban. He considers a genealogical relationship plausible, though data on Betoi is scarce.Zamponi, Raoul (2017). Betoi-Jirara, Sáliban, and Hodɨ: Relationships among Three Linguistic Lineages of the Mid-Orinoco Region. ''Anthropological Linguistics'', Volume 59, Number 3, Fall 2017, pp. 263-321. There are lexical similarities with the Hotï language (Jodï), and this has been interpreted as evidence for a Jodï–Saliban language family.Labrada, Jorge Emilio Rosés. 2015. "Is Jodï a Sáliban Language?." Paper presented at the Workshop on Historical relationships among languages of the Americas, Leiden, 2-5 September 2015. 18pp. However, the similarities have also been explained as contact. Jolkesky (2009) includes Piaroa-Saliba, Betoi and Hodi in a Duho family along with Ticuna–Yuri.

Vocabulary

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for the Piaroa–Saliban languages. : Rosés Labrada (2019) lists the following Swadesh-list items that are reconstructable to Proto-Sáliban. :

References

Bibliography

* Benaissa, T. (1991). Vocabulario Sáliba-Español Español Sáliba. Lomalinda: Alberto Lleras Camargo. * Feddema, H. (1991). Diccionario Piaroa - Español. (Manuscript). * Krute, L. D. (1989). Piaroa nominal morphosemantics. New York: Columbia University. (Doctoral dissertation). * Kaufman, Terrence. (1990)
Language history in South America: What we know and how to know more.
In D. L. Payne (Ed.), ''Amazonian linguistics: Studies in lowland South American languages'' (pp. 13–67). Austin: University of Texas Press. . * Kaufman, Terrence. (1994). The native languages of South America. In C. Mosley & R. E. Asher (Eds.), ''Atlas of the world's languages'' (pp. 46–76). London: Routledge.

External links

* PROEL

{{DEFAULTSORT:Piaroa-Saliban languages Jodi–Saliban languages