The Peba–Yaguan language family (also Yaguan, Peban, Yáwan) is located in the northwestern
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...
, but today Yagua is the only remaining spoken language of the family.
Internal structure
French ethnologist
Paul Rivet had suggested that the Peba–Yaguan family had been divided into two branches, with
Yameo in one branch, and
Peba and
Yagua in the other. There is extremely little documentation of Yameo and Peba, both of which are now extinct, though the town
Pebas on the Amazon River clearly takes its name from this group of people. The available documentation is largely due to the efforts of early Catholic missionaries, as summarized by Rivet.
ÄŒestmÃr Loukotka
ÄŒestmÃr Loukotka (12 November 1895 – 13 April 1966) was a Czechoslovakia, Czechoslovak linguist and ethnologist. His daughter was Jarmila Loukotková.
Career
Loukotka proposed a Classification of indigenous languages of the Americas#Lou ...
(1968), a Czechoslovak linguist, also lists
Masamae (Mazán, Parara) as part of the language family. It is spoken around the
Mazán River in
Loreto Department, Peru, and is most closely related to
Yameo.
Brazilian linguist
Marcelo Jolkesky (2016) groups
Peba and
Yameo in one branch, and
Yagua in another separate branch.
[Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho De Valhery. 2016. ]
Estudo arqueo-ecolinguÃstico das terras tropicais sul-americanas
'. Ph.D. dissertation, University of BrasÃlia
A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...
.
Classification
There is no sound scientific evidence yet that the Peba–Yaguan family is related to any other family or stock of South America (in particular, there is no evidence for grouping it with
Cariban languages
The Cariban languages are a family of languages Indigenous to north-eastern South America. They are widespread across northernmost South America, from the mouth of the Amazon River to the Colombian Andes, and they are also spoken in small poc ...
). There has likely been contact between the Yaguas and
Bora–Witotoan peoples, perhaps particularly during the era of the rubber-trade; this may account for some structural similarities between the languages (
Doris Payne, linguist, forthcoming). Kaufman (2007) includes
Sabela,
Taushiro, and
Omurano in his
Yawan family.
Language contact
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the
Kwaza,
Zaparoan, and
Nambikwaran language families due to contact.
Vocabulary
Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items.
:
Further reading
*Powlison, P. (1995). Diccionario Yagua - Castellano. (Serie LingüÃstica Peruana, 35). Lima: Ministerio de Educación and Summer Institute of Linguistics.
References
* Payne, Doris L. forthcoming. ''Source of the Yagua classifier system''.
Catholic Encyclopedia article
{{DEFAULTSORT:Peba-Yaguan languages
Language families