Awa Pit language
| Awa Pit | |
|---|---|
| Cuaiquer | |
| Native to | Colombia, Ecuador |
| Native speakers | 21,000 (1986) |
| Language family | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | kwi |
Awa or Awa pit, also known as Cuaiquer, is a Barbacoan language spoken by the Awa-Kwaiker people, who inhabit territory straddling northern Ecuador and southern Colombia (the language is sometimes also referred to as Coaiquer, Quaiquer, or Kwaiker in Colombia, and as Awapit in Ecuador).[1] Awa pit is classified by UNESCO as a severely endangered language.[2]
Contents |
Speakers and characteristics [edit]
The Awa pit language has around 21 thousand speakers, mostly residing on the Colombian Pacific slopes of the Andes, with about a thousand in an adjacent area of Ecuador.[1] While most men also speak Spanish, the women and children are predominantly monolingual.[1] Literacy among Awa speakers is less than 1% in their native language and under 5% in the secondary Spanish language.[1]
The Awa pit language has a subject–object–verb structure and has adopted the Latin script.[1] Grammatically, Awa pit uses a characteristic conjunct/disjunct system of verb suffixes for person-marking which displays similarities with some Tibeto-Burman languages, such as the Newari language of Kathmandu.[3][4][5]
Phonology [edit]
The Awa pit inventory is as follows:[6]
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central | lateral | |||||
| Occlusive | p | t | k | |||
| Fricative | unvoiced | s | ɬ | ʃ | ||
| voiced | z | ʒ | ||||
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||
| Liquid | l | |||||
| Semivowel | w | j | ||||
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | ɨ | u |
| Open | a |
References [edit]
- ^ a b c d e Awa–Cuaiquer, per SIL, Ethnologue, 1986 and 1991. Retrieved 23 April 2012.
- ^ Haboud, Marleen; Adelaarurl, Willem (2008). "Awapit" . In: Moseley, Christopher, ed (2010). Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, 3rd edn, Paris. UNESCO Publishing (online version). Retrieved 23 April 2012.
- ^ Curnow, Timothy Jowan (1997). A Grammar of Awa Pit (Cuaiquer): An indigenous language of south-western Colombia. PhD Thesis, Australian National University, Canberra. Retrieved 23 April 2012.
- ^ Curnow, Timothy Jowan (2 May 2002). "Conjunct/disjunct marking in Awa Pit". Linguistics – An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences 40(3):611-627.(subscription required)
- ^ Cysouw, Michael (2003). "The Paradigmatic Structure of Person Marking", p 43–44. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199554263
- ^ Curnow, Timothy Jowan; Liddicoat, Anthony J (1998). "The Barbacoan languages of Colombia and Ecuador". Anthropological Linguistics 40(3):384-408.(subscription required)
External links [edit]
- "The Awa Pit Language" – MultiTree: A Digital Library of Language Relationships
- "Cuaiquer Indian Language (Awa Pit, Awa-Cuaiquer)" – Native-Languages.org
- "Gramática pedagógica del Awapit" (A learner's grammar of Awapit) – direct download link to Microsoft Word document in Spanish, available from here (via Sasiku Project)
