Kulina (also Kulína, Kulyna, Culina, Curina, Corina, Korina, Culina-Madijá, Madijá, Madija, Madiha, Madihá) is an Arawan language of

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

and

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

spoken by about 4,000

Kulina people The Kulina are an Indigenous people of Brazil and Peru. 2,540 Kulina live in Amazonas and Acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area ...

. With such few speakers, Kulina is considered a threatened language.

History and geography

The Kulina people traditionally live in the states of

Acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

and Amazonas in Brazil and the Ucayali region in Peru. In Acre and Ucayali, the villages are found along the Purus and Envira rivers. In Amazonas, the villages are around the Juruá, Tarauacá and Jutaí rivers.

Classification

Kulina is a member of the Arawan language family. According to Dienst (2014), it forms a Madihá

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...

with Western Jamamadi and Deni. The term ''madihá'' means 'people' in all of these languages. Kulina is similar to the Deni language, as they have even been considered different dialects of the same language. Both languages have

SOV word order SOV may refer to: * SOV, a former ticker symbol for Sovereign Bank * SOV, a legal cryptocurrency created by the Sovereign Currency Act of 2018 of the Republic of the Marshall Islands * SOV, the National Rail station code for Southend Victoria rail ...

, as well as three sets of alveolar

affricate consonant An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...

s. It is believed the presence of the reconstructed phoneme ''*s'' in place of the fricative *s^h is indicative of the Kulina and Deni languages as opposed to other languages in the Arawan family.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonants sounds /pʰ, t̪, d͡z, t͡s, t͡sʰ, ɾ, β~w/ may also be pronounced as /ɸ~f, t͡ʃ, z~ɟ, s, sʰ~ʃ, l, v/.

Vowels

An sound can also range to a sound. The vowel sound only appears in diphthongs.

Grammar

The basic constituent order is subject–object–verb. It is predominantly a head-marking language with

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...

morphology and some fusion. Kulina is a

head-final In linguistics, head directionality is a proposed Principles and parameters, parameter that classifies languages according to whether they are head-initial (the head (linguistics), head of a phrase precedes its Complement (linguistics), complement ...

language and contains many more

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

es than

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the word to which it is affixed. Prefixes, like other affixes, can b ...

es. There are two

noun class In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some ...

es and two

genders Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other than the ...

and

agreement Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus (disambiguation), a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of ...

transitive verb A transitive verb is a verb that entails one or more transitive objects, for example, 'enjoys' in ''Amadeus enjoys music''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not entail transitive objects, for example, 'arose' in ''Beatrice arose ...

s is determined by a number of complex factors, both syntactic and pragmatic. In transitive sentences, the verb agree with the object in gender and with the subject in person and number. In intransitive sentences, the verb agrees with its subject in person, number and gender.

Bibliography

* Boyer, Cindy & Jim Boyer. 2000. ''Dictionario: (sic) Culina - Castellano.'' Unpublished Manuscript. * Dienst, Stefan. 2014. ''A Grammar of Kulina''. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. * Dienst, Stefan. 2009.
Stative Verbs in Kulina
. ''ReVel Revista Virtual de Estudos de Lingaugem.'' * Diesnt, Stefan. 2008a. "Portuguese Influence on Kulina". In Thomas Stolz, Dik Bakker & Rosa Salas Palomo (eds.) ''Aspects of language contact. New theoretical'', ''methodological and empirical findings with special focus on Romancisation processes'', 287-297. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. * Dienst, Stefan. 2008b. "Why Kulina doesn't have an antipassive". ''Amerindia'' 32: 27-36. * Dienst, Stefan. 2005. "The innovation of s in Kulina and Deni". ''Anthropological Linguistics'' 52: 209-243. * Monserrat, Ruth Maria Fonini & Abel O. Silva. 1986. ''Gramática da língua Kulina. Dialeto do Igarapé do Anjo''. Acre: Conselho Indigenista Missionário. * Silva, Abel O. & Ruth M. F. Monserrat.1984. ''Dicionário Kulina – Português e Português – Kulina. (Dialeto do Igarapé do Anjo)''. Acre: Conselho Indigenista Missionário. * Tiss, Frank. 2004. ''Gramática da língua Madiha (Kulina)''. São Leopoldo: Oikos. * Wright, Pamela Sue. 1991. La hipótesis del inacusativo y los verbos mádija (culina). ''Revista Latino-americana de Estudios Ethnolingüísticos'' 6: 49-62. * Wright, Pamela Sue. Madija predicates. ''Working Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics'', University of North Dakota 39: 93-140.

References

{{Languages of Peru Arawan languages Indigenous languages of Western Amazonia Languages of Peru Endangered Arawan languages Subject–object–verb languages