Ticuna language

Ticuna, or Tikuna, is a language spoken by approximately 50,000 people in Brazil, Peru, and Colombia. It is the native language of the Ticuna people. Ticuna is generally classified as a language isolate, but may be related to the extinct Yuri language (see Tïcuna-Yuri) and there has been some research indicating similarities between Ticuna and Carabayo.[3][4] 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.

Tïcuna
Duüxügu
Native toBrazil, Colombia, Peru
RegionWest Amazonas. Also spoken in Colombia, Peru.
EthnicityTicuna people
Native speakers
47,000 (1998–2008)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3tca
Glottologticu1245
ELPTikuna[2]
Distribution of speakers of the Ticuna language
Coordinates: 3°15′S 68°35′W

Tïcuna is also known as Magta, Maguta, Tucuna/Tukuna, and Tukna.

Sociolinguistic situation

Brazil

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

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

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 .

Christian Ministries

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

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 Ñ 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

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 five level tones and four 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 ü. 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

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

Vowels qualities are /a e i ɨ u o/. Vowels may be nasalized and/or show creaky voice, under which tones are lowered.[10] There are diphthongs /ai̯/ and /au̯/ that carry a single tone, contrasting with vowel sequences /ai/ and /au/ that carry two tones.

Oral and nasalized vowels and creaky voiced
FrontCentralBack
Close /i/, /ḭ/ /ĩ/, /ḭ̃//ɨ/, /ɨ̰/, /ɨ̃/, /ɨ̰̃//u/, /ṵ/, /ũ/, /ṵ̃/
Mid /e/, /ḛ/, /ẽ/, /ḛ̃//o/, /o̰/, /õ/, /õ̰/
Open /a/, /a̰/, /ã/, /ã̰/

Long vowels do not occur, but sequences of identical vowels (such as aa) that carry two tones. Tones are /˥ ˦ ˧ ˨ ˩ ˥˩ ˦˩ ˧˩ ˦˧/. Tones in spoken Ticuna are not related to an absolute pitch, but rather by the relative difference in pitch.[7]

The consonants of Ticuna consist of the following phonemes:[10]

Bilabial Dental Palatal Velar Glottal
Stop p, b t, d k, ɡ ʔ
Affricate tʃ, dʒ
Fricative (f) s (x)
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Liquid l, ɾ
Glide w j

Ticuna has no lateral or uvular consonants.[10]

The affricate /dʒ/ (spelled "y") may be pronounced as /ɟ/,[11] and also /j/, but only before the vowel /a/. A /ɯ/ vowel sound may also be pronounced as a central /ɨ/ sound. /f s x l/ are found in Spanish loans.

Common words[12]
Ticuna Word Meaning
Wüxi One
Taxre Two
Tomaxixpü Three
Ãgümücü Four
Wüxi mixepüx Five
Naixmixwa rü wüxi Six
Naixmixwa rü taxre Seven
Naixmixwa rü tomaxixpü Eight
Naixmixwa rü ãgümücü Nine
Guxmixepüx Ten
Chatü Man
Ngexüi Woman
Airu Dog
Iake Sun
Tawēmake Moon
Dexá 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 rü" and then append the values for one through four respectively (such that six is "naixmixwa rü" and "wüxi" meaning one).[12]

Examples of spoken language

An example of spoken Ticuna can be found here.[13]

Phrase[14] Meaning
Nuxmaxē pa corix general greeting spoken to a man ("sir")
Nuxmaxē pa chiurax general greeting spoken to a woman ("madam")
Nuxmaxē pa yimax general greeting spoken to a man ("fellow")
Nuxmaxē pa woxrecü general greeting spoken to a woman ("girl")
Nuxmaxē pa pacüx general greeting spoken to a young woman ("miss")
Nuxmaxē pa chomücüx general greeting spoken to a friend
Nuxmax general greeting spoken to a stranger
Ngexta cuxū? Where are you going? (spoken to one person)
Ngexta pexī? Where are you going? (spoken to a group)
Ngexta ne cuxū? Where are you coming from? (spoken to one person)
Ngexta ne pexī? Where are you coming from? (spoken to a group)

Vocabulary (Loukotka 1968)
See also: Piaroa–Saliban languages § Vocabulary

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items.[15]

glossTucuna
onewöi
twotádi
threetamaípo
headna-eró
earna-chin
toothná-puita
manyáte
fireöo
sunöake
earthnáni
maizecháwue
tapirnáke

References
  1. Tïcuna at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Endangered Languages Project data for Tikuna.
  3. "Linking Isolated Languages: Linguistic Relationships of the Carabayo".
  4. 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-Yurí Linguistic Family". PLOS ONE. 9 (4): e94814. Bibcode:2014PLoSO...994814S. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0094814. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 3989239. PMID 24739948.
  5. 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.
  6. "Latin American Ministries - Project Ticuna".
  7. "Ticuna Indigenous Trive in Brazil and Colombia".
  8. Everett, Caleb; et al. (February 3, 2015). "Climate, vocal folds, and tonal languages: Connecting the physiological and geographic dots" (PDF). 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.
  9. Jolkesky, Marcelo (2016), Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas., Brasilia: UnB. PhD Dissertation.
  10. Anderson, Doris, Conversational Ticuna, Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1962
  11. Montes Rodríguez, María Emilia (2004). Lengua ticuna: resultados de fonología y sintaxis.
  12. "Vocabularin in Native American Languages: Ticuna Words". Native Languages.
  13. "Global Recordings - Ticuna Language".
  14. "Greetings in more than 3000 languages".
  15. Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Classification of South American Indian languages. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center.
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