Ticuna?Yuri language spoken in Amazon Basin
Ticuna
,
Tikuna
,
Tucuna
or
Tukuna
is a language spoken by approximately 50,000 people in the
Amazon Basin
, including the countries of
Brazil
,
Peru
, and
Colombia
. It is the native language of the
Ticuna people
and is considered "stable" by ethnologue.
[1]
Ticuna is generally classified as a
language isolate
, but may be related to the extinct
Yuri language
(see
Ticuna-Yuri
) and there has been some research indicating similarities between Ticuna and
Carabayo
.
[2]
[3]
It is a
tonal language
, and therefore the meaning of words with the same phonemes can vary greatly simply by changing the tone used to pronounce them.
Ticuna is also known as Magta, Maguta, Tucuna/Tukuna, and Tukna.
Sociolinguistic situation
[
edit
]
Brazil
[
edit
]
Ticuna is the Indigenous language most widely spoken in Brazil.
[4]
Despite being home to more than 50% of the Ticunas, Brazil has only recently started to invest in native language education. Brazilian Ticunas now have a written literature and an education provided by the Brazilian
National Foundation for the Indian
(FUNAI) and the
Ministry of Education
. Textbooks in Ticuna are used by native teachers trained in both Portuguese and Ticuna to teach the language to the children. A large-scale project has been recording traditional narrations and writing them down to provide the literate Ticunas with some literature to practice with.
Ticuna education is not a privilege, but part of a wider project carried on by the Brazilian government to provide all significant minorities with education in their own language.
In 2012, the Brazilian government launched an educational campaign for the prevention of
AIDS
and
violence against women
, the first such campaign in Brazil ever conducted in an indigenous language.
[5]
Peru
[
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]
Ticunas in Peru have had native language education at least since the 1960s. They use a writing system that was, apparently, the base for the development of the Brazilian one. However, much of the literature available to Peruvian Ticunas comprise standard textbooks.
Colombia
[
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]
Colombian Ticunas are taught in Spanish, when they have access to school at all. Since the establishment of Ticuna schools in Brazil some have ventured to attend them
[
citation needed
]
.
Christian Ministries
[
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]
A number of Christian ministries have reached the Ticuna people. These ministries have translated the bible into the native Ticuna language and even have a weekday radio show that is broadcast in Ticuna, Portuguese, and Spanish by the Latin American Ministries (LAM).
[6]
Literacy
[
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]
Besides its use at the Ticuna schools, the language has a dozen books published every year, both in Brazil and Peru. Those books employ a specially devised phonetic writing system using conventions similar to those found in Portuguese (except for K instead of C and the letter N instead of NH) instead of the more complex scientific notation found, for instance, at the
Language Museum
.
In school Ticuna is taught formally. Children in schools typically in areas of Catholic Missionaries are also taught either Portuguese or Spanish as well.
[7]
Linguistic structure
[
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]
Ticuna is a fairly
isolating
language morphologically, meaning that most words consist of just one morpheme. However, Ticuna words usually have more than one syllable, unlike isolating languages such as
Vietnamese
. Ticuna is an unusually tonal language for South America, with over 10 mostly contour tones. Tones are only indicated orthographically, with diacritics, when confusion is likely. The six vowels may be nasal or laryngealized; consonants may also be glottalized. Glottal stop is spelled
x
, and the sixth vowel
u
. Typologically, Ticuna word order is
subject?verb?object
(SVO), though unusually this can vary within the language.
Research has indicated isolated tonal languages with complex tones are more likely to occur in regions of higher humidity and higher mean average temperature because it is believed the vocal folds can produce less consistent tones in colder, drier air. Ticuna was one of the languages of focus in this study due to its prevalence?and complexity?of tones.
[8]
Classification
[
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]
Some have tentatively associated the Ticuna language within the proposals of the
macro-arawakano
or with
macro-tukano
stocks, although these classifications are highly speculative given the lack of evidence. A more recent hypothesis has linked Yuri-Ticuna with the
Saliban
and
Hoti
languages in the
Duho stock
.
[9]
However, the linguistic consensus is that Ticuna may actually be a
language isolate
in its present-day situation, since Yuri is extinct.
Phonology
[
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]
- Vowels
Vowels qualities are
/a
e
i
?
u
o/
. Vowels may be nasalized and/or show creaky voice, under which tones are lowered.
[10]
There are diphthongs
/ai?/
and
/au?/
that carry a single tone, contrasting with vowel sequences
/ai/
and
/au/
that carry two tones.
- Tones
Ticuna has one of the largest tone inventories in the world with 8?12 phonemic tones depending on the dialect.
[
citation needed
]
- Consonants
The consonants of Ticuna consist of the following phonemes:
[10]
Natively, Ticuna has no lateral or uvular consonants,
[10]
although /l/ is found in some Spanish loanwords.
The affricate
/d?/
(spelled "y") may be pronounced as
/?/
,
[11]
and also
/j/
, but only before the vowel
/a/
. A central
/?/
vowel sound may also be pronounced as a back
[?]
sound. Other sounds,
/f
s
x
l/
are found in Spanish loans.
Syntax
[
edit
]
Ticuna displays
nominative/accusative alignment
, with person, number, noun class, and clause type indexed on the verb via proclitics. Transitive and unergative verbs tend to favor an Subject-(Object)-Verb word order, while unaccusative verbs show a preference for Verb-Subject word order.
[4]
Common words
[12]
[
edit
]
Ticuna Word
|
Meaning
|
Wuxi
|
One
|
Taxre
|
Two
|
Tomaxixpu
|
Three
|
Agumucu
|
Four
|
Wuxi mixepux
|
Five
|
Naixmixwa ru wuxi
|
Six
|
Naixmixwa ru taxre
|
Seven
|
Naixmixwa ru tomaxixpu
|
Eight
|
Naixmixwa ru agumucu
|
Nine
|
Guxmixepux
|
Ten
|
Chatu
|
Man
|
Ngexui
|
Woman
|
Airu
|
Dog
|
Iake
|
Sun
|
Taw?make
|
Moon
|
Dexa
|
Water
|
The counting words in Ticuna imply a base five system of counting as the word for five is the combination of "one five". Six through nine all contain the same beginning "naixmixwa ru" and then append the values for one through four respectively (such that six is "naixmixwa ru" and "wuxi" meaning one).
[12]
Examples of spoken language
[
edit
]
An example of spoken Ticuna can be found
here
.
[13]
Phrase
[14]
|
Meaning
|
Nuxmax? pa corix
|
general greeting spoken to a man ("sir")
|
Nuxmax? pa chiurax
|
general greeting spoken to a woman ("madam")
|
Nuxmax? pa yimax
|
general greeting spoken to a man ("fellow")
|
Nuxmax? pa woxrecu
|
general greeting spoken to a woman ("girl")
|
Nuxmax? pa pacux
|
general greeting spoken to a young woman ("miss")
|
Nuxmax? pa chomucux
|
general greeting spoken to a friend
|
Nuxmax
|
general greeting spoken to a stranger
|
Ngexta cux??
|
Where are you going? (spoken to one person)
|
Ngexta pex??
|
Where are you going? (spoken to a group)
|
Ngexta ne cux??
|
Where are you coming from? (spoken to one person)
|
Ngexta ne pex??
|
Where are you coming from? (spoken to a group)
|
Vocabulary (Loukotka 1968)
[
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]
Loukotka
(1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items.
[15]
gloss
|
Tucuna
|
one
|
woi
|
two
|
tadi
|
three
|
tamaipo
|
head
|
na-ero
|
ear
|
na-chin
|
tooth
|
na-puita
|
man
|
yate
|
fire
|
oo
|
sun
|
oake
|
earth
|
nani
|
maize
|
chawue
|
tapir
|
nake
|
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Size and vitality of Ticuna"
.
Ethnologue
. Retrieved
2022-11-28
.
- ^
"Linking Isolated Languages: Linguistic Relationships of the Carabayo"
. 28 April 2014.
- ^
Seifart, Frank; Echeverri, Juan Alvaro (2014-04-16).
"Evidence for the Identification of Carabayo, the Language of an Uncontacted People of the Colombian Amazon, as Belonging to the Tikuna-Yuri Linguistic Family"
.
PLOS ONE
.
9
(4): e94814.
Bibcode
:
2014PLoSO...994814S
.
doi
:
10.1371/journal.pone.0094814
.
ISSN
1932-6203
.
PMC
3989239
.
PMID
24739948
.
- ^
a
b
Skilton, Amalia (2021).
"Ticuna (tca) language documentation: A guide to materials in the California Language Archive"
.
Language Documentation & Conservation
.
15
: 153?189.
hdl
:
10125/24972
.
ISSN
1934-5275
.
- ^
Associated Press (2012-10-11).
"Brazilian government uses indigenous language for the first time in anti-AIDS campaign"
.
The Washington Post
. Retrieved
2012-10-21
.
[
dead link
]
- ^
"Latin American Ministries ? Project Ticuna"
.
- ^
"Ticuna Indigenous Trive in Brazil and Colombia"
.
- ^
Everett, Caleb; et al. (February 3, 2015).
"Climate, vocal folds, and tonal languages: Connecting the physiological and geographic dots"
.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
.
112
(5): 1322?7.
Bibcode
:
2015PNAS..112.1322E
.
doi
:
10.1073/pnas.1417413112
.
PMC
4321236
.
PMID
25605876
.
S2CID
1678719
.
- ^
Jolkesky, Marcelo (2016),
"Estudo arqueo-ecolinguistico das terras tropicais sul-americanas."
,
Title in English: An Archaeo-Ecolinguistic Study of the South American Tropics. The Downloadable Version (1.2) is the 2nd Update of My Original PhD Dissertation (Original Version: February 2016; 2nd Update Publication Date: October 2017)
, Brasilia: UnB. PhD Dissertation.
- ^
a
b
c
Anderson, Doris,
Conversational Ticuna
, Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1962
- ^
Montes Rodriguez, Maria Emilia (2004).
Lengua ticuna: resultados de fonologia y sintaxis
.
- ^
a
b
"Vocabularin in Native American Languages: Ticuna Words"
.
Native Languages
.
- ^
"Global Recordings ? Ticuna Language"
.
- ^
"Greetings in more than 3000 languages"
.
- ^
Loukotka, ?estmir
(1968).
Classification of South American Indian languages
. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center.
External links
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