Karitiana, otherwise known as Caritiana or Yjxa, is a
Tupian language spoken in the
State of Rondônia, Brazil, by 210 out of 320
Karitiana people, or 400 according to Cláudio Karitiana, in the Karitiana reserve 95 kilometres south of
Porto Velho
Porto Velho (, ''Old Port'') is the capital (political), capital of the Brazilian States of Brazil, state of Rondônia, in the upper Amazon River basin. The population is 460,434 people (as of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, ...
. The language belongs to the
Arikém language family from the Tupi stock. It is the only surviving language in the family after the other two members,
Kabixiâna and
Arikém, became extinct.
History
Although the first Western contacts with the Karitiana people are believed to have begun in the 17th century, the first recorded contact dates to 1907 when a survey conducted by Cândido Rondon indicated that they were already working for
Bolivia
Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...
n
rubber tappers. Systematic contact between the Karitiana people and Caucasians, nevertheless began in the 1950s with the intervention of ISA and
Roman Catholic Salesian missionaries. As a result of the missionaries' visit, a list of words and phrases were compiled, allowing Professor
Aryon Rodrigues, who was working at the
University of Campinas at the time, to classify the language as a member of the Arikém Family by comparing the language to existing materials on the Arikém language.
Many of the Karitiana people are bilingual in Karitiana and
Portuguese, and despite the population growth in recent years and the language's high level of transmission, the language is listed as
vulnerable by
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...
due to the low number of speakers and the proximity to the city of
Porto Velho
Porto Velho (, ''Old Port'') is the capital (political), capital of the Brazilian States of Brazil, state of Rondônia, in the upper Amazon River basin. The population is 460,434 people (as of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, ...
. A literacy project in the 1990s resulted in 24 students being made literate, and written documentation of the culture, as well as audio recordings were created. As of 2005, indigenous teachers have been holding lessons in the villages. However, the literacy project ended in 1997 due to a lack of permanent funding.
Literature on Karitiana
Some of the earliest works on the language date to the 1970s by missionary David Landin, who spent time in the Karitiana village between 1972 and 1977, through a partnership between
FUNAI (Fundação Nacional do Índio) and
SIL International
SIL Global (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics International) is an evangelical Christian nonprofit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, to expan ...
(Summer Institute of Linguistics) (Landin, 2005). He has mainly studied syntax (1984), but has also compiled lexicon that has resulted in the creation of a Karitiana dictionary (2005). Another early researcher is Gloria Kindell, also from the SIL, who has analyzed phonological and syntactic aspects of Karitiana (1981).
The first substantial
grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...
of Karitiana, however, was published by Luciana Storto (1999), describing topics on the
phonology
Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...
,
morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
*Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
*Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...
and
syntax
In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...
, and since then she has published a number of papers on Karitana
syntax
In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...
(2003, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2014). Subsequently, a number of studies on the language has continued to be published, covering a wide array of topics. Ana Müller, for example has published papers on Karitiana
semantics
Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...
(2006, 2009, 2010, 2012). Ivan Rocha da Silva has produced a variety of works on Karitiana syntax (Rocha 2014), including two extensive descriptions on syntactical topics (2011, 2016).
Ethnographically, Felipe Ferreira Vander Velden has documented a number of social aspects of the Karitiana people, specifically researching about the relations between indigenous peoples and animals. He has published a book about domestic animals among the Kartitiana (2012).
Phonology
Vowels
Karitiana vowels can be distinguished by the
features igh ack and
ound and can be
short or long,
oral or nasal.
Consonants
Karitiana also possesses and but, according to Luciana Storto (1999), the occurrence of is predictable, and is extremely rare, though it occurs in Karitiana's
personal pronouns
Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it''). Personal pronouns may also take different for ...
.
The nasals are
pre-oralized if they are preceded by an oral vowel, and
post-oralized if they are followed by one. The
velar nasal
The voiced velar nasal, also known as eng, engma, or agma (from Greek 'fragment'), is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''E ...
is denasalized to before oral vowels in unstressed syllables, post-oralized to before oral vowels in stressed syllables, and pre-oralized after oral vowels. are
nasalized when surrounded by nasal vowels.
Morphology
Everett lists six
word class
In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are as ...
es for Karitiana. In general, Karitiana follows the general trend in Tupi languages of presenting little dependent-marking or nominal morphology, though it has a robust system of
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 ...
verbal affixes. Valence-related verbal prefixes occur closer to the verb root than other prefixes and, according to Everett, the most crucial valency distinction in Karitiana is the distinction between semantically
monovalent and polyvalent verbs as this plays an important role in verbal inflections and clausal constructions, such as the formation of
imperative,
interrogative
An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence (linguistics), sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its Declarative ...
and negative clauses, as well as in the establishment of grammatical relations. Karitiana displays a binary future/non-future tense suffix system and a number of aspect suffixes. It also possesses desiderative inflection, an optional evidentiality suffix, a verb-focus system among other constructions. Karitiana possesses a nominalizing suffix that is attached to verbs in order to derive nouns. In general, nouns serving as core arguments for a verb are left unmarked for case, but non-core arguments can receive allative and oblique case markers.
Pronouns
There are free pronouns and pronominal prefixes, the latter of which serves to cross-reference the
absolutive
In grammar, the absolutive case (abbreviated ) is the case of nouns in ergative–absolutive languages that would generally be the subjects of intransitive verbs or the objects of transitive verbs in the translational equivalents of nominative� ...
nominal of a given
clause
In language, a clause is a Constituent (linguistics), constituent or Phrase (grammar), phrase that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic Predicate (grammar), predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject (grammar), ...
, and also functions as
possessors when attached to nouns.
Karitiana has no pronoun distinction is made between male vs. female (as "he" or "she" in English).
The third person pronoun is the only free pronoun that can be used to express possession.
Examples of free pronouns and pronominal prefixes:
Demonstratives
Karitiana has at least six
demonstrative pronouns.
Causativization
Karitiana expresses
causation by the prefix or the periphrastic , inferring that one participant is causing another to act in a certain manner. The prefix is used to add an argument to
intransitive verbs, and is used to add a third argument to a
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 ...
, and the former agent receives the
oblique suffix .
Nominalization
The
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 ...
can be attached to
non-finite verb
Non-finite verbs, are verb forms that do not show tense, person, or number. They include:
# Infinitives (e.g., to go, to see) - They often function as nouns or the base form of a verb
# Gerunds (e.g., going, seeing) - These act as nouns but are ...
s, in general, resulting in a noun that is related to the given verb. The meaning of the resulting noun is quite flexible and it varies according to the context. For example:
In certain contexts can be used to refer to canoe, car, airplane, as well as a friend's house that one frequently visits, or make-up and nice clothing, as these are associated, for some Karitiana, to going out in the city.
Verbs associated with can also be preceded by a noun in order to reduce the scope of the nominal:
In some cases, can also be attached to nouns to derive other nouns. For instance, when attached to nouns representing animals, the result is the animal's habitat or a trail used by it.
Syntax
Case and agreement
Karitiana displays an
ergative pattern of agreement, where an intransitive verb agrees with its subject, and a transitive verb agrees with its direct object, as is shown in examples 1a) to 1f) below. This pattern surfaces in all
matrix clause
In language, a clause is a Constituent (linguistics), constituent or Phrase (grammar), phrase that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic Predicate (grammar), predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject (grammar), ...
s and is evident from person agreement morphology on verbs, and is true for both declarative and non-declarative sentences.
An exception is the object
focus
Focus (: foci or focuses) may refer to:
Arts
* Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in East Australia Film
*Focus (2001 film), ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based on the Arthur Miller novel
*Focus (2015 ...
construction, where the transitive verb exceptionally agrees with the ergative argument as shown in examples 2a and 2b. This construction does not involve intransitivization; this exceptional agreement is a product of object focus morphology.
According to Everett many phenomena in Karitiana follow a nominative pattern generally due to the pragmatic status of arguments. He argues that the grammatical relations of Karitiana suggest a system where syntactic phenomena often tend to display nominative-accusative patterns, and morphological phenomena tend to display ergative-absolutive patterns.
Semantics
Quantification
Noun phrase
A noun phrase – or NP or nominal (phrase) – is a phrase that usually has a noun or pronoun as its head, and has the same grammatical functions as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently ...
s (NPs) in Karitiana surface as
bare nouns, without any functional operator, such as
inflection
In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...
to
mark number or
definiteness
In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases that distinguishes between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those that are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical ...
. Bare nouns can refer to one or more entities, definite or indefinite, and these are determined by the context in which they occur.
Karitiana does not require
numeral classifiers, thus numerals receive the oblique suffix -t and are directly linked to common nouns. The numeral system consists of units from 1 to 5, and larger numbers are expressed with a combination of these units.
Karitiana makes a lexical distinction between
mass
Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...
and
count
Count (feminine: countess) is a historical title of nobility in certain European countries, varying in relative status, generally of middling rank in the hierarchy of nobility. Pine, L. G. ''Titles: How the King Became His Majesty''. New York: ...
nouns. Count nouns can be counted directly, while mass nouns require a system of measurement.
Quantifying expressions can behave like adverbs or nouns. The word is used to mean nobody or never, and the word is used to express quantification of nouns and verbs.
Universal quantification is conveyed by the expression , where is a third person anaphora, is the verb to be, and is the SUBordinate particle. This expression roughly means those who are. Anaphoric is used when the quantifying expression is not adjacent to the noun it modifies, and is not necessary when it is adjacent to the noun.
References
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Further reading
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*Landin, David J. ''Dicionário e Léxico Karitiana/Português''. Summer Institute of Linguistics, 2005
*Muller, Ana. "Distributividade: o caso dos numerais reduplicados em karitiana". ''Cadernos de Estudos Linguísticos''. UNICAMP, vol. 54, pp. 225–243, 2012.
*Muller, Ana; Sanchez-Mendes, L. "O Significado da Pluracionalidade em Karitiana". ''Cadernos de Estudos Lingüísticos''. UNICAMP, vol. 52, pp. 215–231, 2010.
*Muller, Ana. "Variação semântica: individuação e número na língua Karitiana". ''Estudos Lingüísticos''. Universiadade de São Paulo, vol. 38, pp. 295–308, 2009.
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*Storto, L. R. "Subordination in Karitina". "Amérindia", vol. 35, pp. 219–237, 2012
*Storto, L. R. "Paralelos Estruturais entre a Quantificação Universal e as Orações Adverbiais em Karitiana". ''Estudos Linguísticos'' (São Paulo. 1978), vol. 42, pp. 174–181, 2013
*Storto, L & I. Rocha (2014). "Estrutura Argumental na Língua Karitiana". ''Sintaxe e Semântica do Verbo em Línguas Indígenas do Brasil''. Campinas: Mercado de Letras. pp. 17–42.
*Storto, L. & I. Rocha. (2014). "Strategies of Valence Change in Karitiana". ''Incremento de Valencia en las Lenguas Amazónicas''. Francesc Queixalos, Stella Telles & Ana Carla Bruno (resps.). Universidad Nacional de Colombia & Instituto Caro Y Cuervo. Bogotá. 51–69.
*Storto, L. (2014). ''Reduplication in Karitiana''. In ''Reduplication in the Indigenous languages of South America''. Gale Goodwin Gómez & Hein van der Voort (eds.). Brill's Studies in the Indigenous Languages of the Americas. Brill. 401–426.
*Storto, L. (2014). "Information Structure and Constituent Order in Karitiana Clauses". Information ''Structure and Reference Tracking in Complex Sentences''. Rik van Gijn, Jeremy Hannond, Dejan Matic, Saskia van Putten & Ana Vilcay Galucio (eds.). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 163–191.
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3ANAPH:third person anaphoric prefix
AUX:auxiliar
NSAP:non-speech act participant voice
OFC:object focus construction
PART:participle
PROX:proximal
SAP:speech act participant voice
SUB:subordinator
{{DEFAULTSORT:Karitiana Language
Tupian languages
Mamoré–Guaporé linguistic area