Karajá language
| Karajá | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Native to | Brazil | |||
| Region | Araguaia River | |||
| Ethnicity | Karajá people | |||
| Native speakers | 3,600 (1999)[1] | |||
| Language family |
Macro-Gê
|
|||
| Dialects |
Javaé
Xambioá
|
|||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | kpj | |||
 |
||||
|
||||
The Karajá language, also known as Ynã, is spoken by 3–4,000 Karajá people[1] in some 30 villages in central Brazil. Dialects are North Karaja, South Karaja, Xambioá, and Javaé. There are distinct male and female forms of speech; one of the principal differences is that men drop the sound /k/, which is pronounced by women.
Karaja is a verb-final language,[2] with simple noun and more complex verbal morphology that includes noun incorporation. Verbs inflect for direction as well as person, mood, object, and voice.
Contents |
Phonology [edit]
Karajá has nine oral vowels, /i e ɛ, ɨ ə a, u o ɔ/, and two nasal vowels, /ə̃ õ/. /a/ is nasalized word initially and when preceded by /h/ or a voiced stop: /aθi/ → [ãθi] 'grass', /ɔha/ → [ɔhã] 'armadillo'; this in turn nasalizes a preceding /b/ or /d/: /bahadu/ → [mãhãdu] 'group', /dadi/ → [nãdi] 'my mother'.[3]
There are only twelve consonants, eight of which are coronal:[4]
| Labial | Dental | Postalveolar | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop/Affricate | Voiceless | tʃ | k | |||
| Voiced | b | d | dʒ | |||
| Implosive | ɗ | |||||
| Fricative | θ | ʃ | h | |||
| Lateral | l | |||||
| Sonorant | w | ɾ | ||||
Men's and women's speech [edit]
Some examples of the differences between men's and women's speech, especially the presence or lack of /k/ (including in borrowings from Portuguese), follow:[5]
| Women | Men | Gloss |
|---|---|---|
| kɔɗu | ɔɗu | turtle |
| kɔlukɔ | ɔluɔ | labret |
| kaɾitʃakɾe | aɾiakɾe | I will walk* |
| bɛɾaku | beɾo | river |
| adõda | aõda | thinɡ |
| dõbĩku | dõbĩu | Sunday (from Portuguese domingo) |
* The /itʃa/ derives historically from *ika
Notes [edit]
References [edit]
- Ribeiro, Eduardo Rivail. (2002) "Direction in Karajá". In Rosa María Ortiz Ciscomani, ed., Vi encuentro internacional de lingüística en el noroeste.
- Ribeiro, Eduard Rivail. (2000) "[ATR] vowel harmony and palatalization in Karajá". Santa Barbara Papers in Linguistics. 10: Proceedings of wail 2000. pp. 80–89.
- Rodrigues, Aryon D. (1999) "Macro-Jê". In R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.), The Amazonian Languages. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
External links [edit]
- http://indian-cultures.com/Cultures/karaja.html
- Alain Fabre, 2005, Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos: KARAJÁ[1]
 |
This indigenous languages of the Americas-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
