Kulina (also Kulína, Kulyna, Culina, Curina, Corina, Korina, Culina-Madijá, Madijá, Madija, Madiha, Madihá) is an
Arawan language
Arawan (also Arahuan, Arauan, Arawán, Arawa, Arauán) is a family of languages spoken in western Brazil ( Amazonas, Acre) and Peru (Ucayali).
Language contact
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Chapakura-Wañam, ...
of
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
and
Peru
, image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg
, image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg
, other_symbol = Great Seal of the State
, other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal
, national_motto = "Fi ...
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 in Brazil; while 400 live in southeastern Peru, along the Purus and Santa Rosa Rivers.
Name
Besides Kulina, they are also called Corina, Culina, Kul ...
. With such few speakers, Kulina is considered a threatened language. 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, as well as three sets of alveolar
affricate consonants. 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.
History and Geography
The Kulina people traditionally live in the states of
Acre
The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square ...
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 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 ...
with Western Jamamadi and Deni.
The term ''madihá'' means 'people' in all of these languages.
Grammar
The basic constituent order is
subject–object–verb. It is predominantly a
head-marking language with
agglutinative morphology and some fusion.
Kulina is a
head-final language and contains many more
suffixes than
prefix
A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy''. Particu ...
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 characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
and
agreement Agreement may refer to:
Agreements between people and organizations
* Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law
* Trade agreement, between countries
* Consensus, a decision-making process
* Contract, enforceable in a court of law
** Meeting of ...
on
transitive verb
A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'cleaned' in ''Donald cleaned the window''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'panicked' in ''Donald panicked''.
Transiti ...
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.
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.
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