Choco languages
Appearance
Chocoan | |
---|---|
Geographic distribution | Colombia & Panama |
Linguistic classification | One of the world's primary language families |
Subdivisions |
|
Glottolog | choc1280 |
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The Choco languages (also Chocoan, Chocó, Chokó) are a small family of Native American languages spread across Colombia and Panama.
Family division
Choco consists of half a dozen known languages, all but two of them extinct.
- The Emberá languages (also known as Chocó proper, Cholo)
- Noanamá (also known as Waunana, Woun Meu)
- Anserma (†)
- Arma (†) ? (unattested)
- Sinúfana (Cenufara) (†) ?
- Caramanta (†) ?
Anserma, Arma, and Sinúfana are extinct.
The Emberá group consists of two languages mainly in Colombia with over 60,000 speakers that lie within a fairly mutually intelligible dialect continuum. Ethnologue divides this into 6 languages. Kaufman (1994) considers the term Cholo to be vague and condescending. Noanamá has some 6,000 speakers on the Panama-Colombia border.
Genetic relations
Choco has been included in a number of hypothetical phylum relationships:
- within Morris Swadesh's Macro-Leco
- Antonio Tovar, Jorge A. Suárez, and Robert Gunn: related to Cariban
- Čestmír Loukotka (1944): Southern Emberá may be related to Paezan, Noanamá to Arawakan
- within Paul Rivet and Loukotka's (1950) Cariban
- Constenla Umaña and Margery Peña: may be related to Chibchan
- within Joseph Greenberg's Nuclear Paezan, most closely related to Paezan and Barbacoan
See also
References
Bibliography
- Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
- Constenla Umaña, Adolfo; & Margery Peña, Enrique. (1991). Elementos de fonología comparada Chocó. Filología y lingüística, 17, 137-191.
- Greenberg, Joseph H. (1987). Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- Gunn, Robert D. (Ed.). (1980). Claificación de los idiomas indígenas de Panamá, con un vocabulario comparativo de los mismos. Lenguas de Panamá (No. 7). Panama: Instituto Nacional de Cultura, Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.
- Kaufman, Terrence. (1990). Language history in South America: What we know and how to know more. In D. L. Payne (Ed.), Amazonian linguistics: Studies in lowland South American languages (pp. 13–67). Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-70414-3.
- Kaufman, Terrence. (1994). The native languages of South America. In C. Mosley & R. E. Asher (Eds.), Atlas of the world's languages (pp. 46–76). London: Routledge.
- Loewen, Jacob. (1963). Choco I & Choco II. International Journal of American Linguistics, 29.
- Licht, Daniel Aguirre. (1999). Embera. Languages of the world/materials 208. LINCOM.
- Mortensen, Charles A. (1999). A reference grammar of the Northern Embera languages. Studies in the languages of Colombia (No.7); SIL publications in linguistics (No. 134). SIL.
- Rivet, Paul; & Loukotka, Cestmír. (1950). Langues d'Amêrique du sud et des Antilles. In A. Meillet & M. Cohen (Eds.), Les langues du monde (Vol. 2). Paris: Champion.
- Suárez, Jorge. (1974). South American Indian languages. The new Encyclopædia Britannica (15th ed.). Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.
- Swadesh, Morris. (1959). Mapas de clasificación lingüística de México y las Américas. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
- Tovar, Antonio; & Larrucea de Tovar, Consuelo. (1984). Catálogo de las lenguas de América del Sur (nueva ed.). Madrid: Editorial Gedos. ISBN 84-249-0957-7.
External links
- Proel: Familia Chocó