Itonama language
{{Short description|Moribund language of Bolivia}}
{{Infobox language
| name = Itonama
| nativename = {{lang|ito|sihni pandara}}
| states = Bolivia
| region = Beni Department
| ethnicity = {{sigfig|2,940|2}} Itonama people (2006)
| speakers = 1
| date = 2012
| ref = e25
| familycolor = American
| family = Language isolate
| script = Latin
| nation = {{flag|Bolivia}}
| iso3 = ito
| glotto = iton1250
| glottorefname = Itonama
| map2 = Lang Status 20-CR.svg
| mapcaption2 = {{center|{{small|Itonama is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger}}}}
| notice = IPA
}}
Itonama is a moribund language isolate once spoken by the Itonama people in the Amazonian lowlands of north-eastern Bolivia. It was spoken on the Itonomas River and Lake{{cite book |last=Loukotka |first=Čestmír |author-link=Čestmír Loukotka |title=Classification of South American Indian languages |url=https://archive.org/details/classificationof0007louk |url-access=registration |publisher=UCLA Latin American Center |year=1968 |location=Los Angeles}} in Beni Department.
In Magdalena town on the western bank of the Itonama River (a tributary of the Iténez River), located in Iténez Province, only a few elderly people remember a few words and phrases.{{cite book |editor-last=Epps |editor-first=Patience |editor-last2=Michael |editor-first2=Lev |title=Amazonian Languages: Language Isolates. Volume I: Aikanã to Kandozi-Chapra |publisher=Walter de Gruyter |location=Berlin |date=2023 |isbn=978-3-11-041940-5}}{{rp|483}}
Language contact
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Nambikwaran languages due to contact.{{cite thesis|last=Jolkesky |first=Marcelo Pinho de Valhery |date=2016 |url=http://www.etnolinguistica.org/tese:jolkesky-2016-arqueoecolinguistica |title=Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas |type=Ph.D. dissertation |location=Brasília |publisher=University of Brasília |edition=2}}
An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013. [https://asjp.clld.org/static/WorldLanguageTree-004.zip ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013)]. found lexical similarities between Itonama and Movima, likely due to contact.
Phonology
=Vowels=
=Consonants=
| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
!colspan="2"| ! Bilabial ! Alveolar ! Palatal ! Velar ! Glottal |
| colspan="2"| Nasal
| {{IPAlink|m}} | {{IPAlink|n}} | | | | |
|---|
| rowspan="3"| Plosive/ Affricate ! {{small|plain}} | {{IPAlink|p}} | {{IPAlink|t}} | {{IPAlink|tʃ}} ~ {{IPAlink|ts}} | {{IPAlink|tʲ}} | {{IPAlink|k}} | {{IPAlink|ʔ}} |
| {{small|ejective}}
| | {{IPAlink|tʼ}} | {{IPAlink|tʃʼ}} ~ {{IPAlink|tsʼ}} | | {{IPAlink|kʼ}} | |
| {{small|voiced}}
| {{IPAlink|b}} | {{IPAlink|d}} | | | | |
| colspan="2"| Fricative
| | {{IPAlink|s}} | | | | {{IPAlink|h}} |
| rowspan="2"| Liquid
! {{small|lateral}} | | {{IPAlink|l}} | | | | |
| {{small|rhotic}}
| | {{IPAlink|ɾ}} | | | | |
| colspan="2"| Semivowel
| {{IPAlink|w}} ~ {{IPAlink|β}} | | | {{IPAlink|j}} | | |
The postalveolar affricates {{IPA|/tʃ tʃʼ/}} have alveolar allophones {{IPA|[ts tsʼ]}}. Variation occurs between speakers, and even within the speech of a single person.
The semivowel {{IPA|/w/}} is realized as a bilabial fricative {{IPAblink|β}} when preceded and followed by identical vowels.{{cite Q|Q130412541}}
Morphology
Itonama is a polysynthetic, head-marking, verb-initial language with an accusative alignment system along with an inverse subsystem in independent clauses, and straightforward accusative alignment in dependent clauses.
Nominal morphology lacks case declension and adpositions and so is simpler than verbal morphology (which has body-part and location incorporation, directionals, evidentials, verbal classifiers, among others).{{cite book |title= Who did what to whom in Magdalena |last= Crevels |first= M |pages= 3 }}
Vocabulary
Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Itonama. They are shown here alongside the forms cited in the Intercontinental Dictionary Series (IDS).
:
| class="wikitable sortable"
! gloss !! Itonama (Loukotka) !! Itonama (IDS) | ||
| one | chash-káni | ukʼa’ne |
| two | chash-chupa | -chupa |
| tooth | huomóte | ohwomotʼe |
| tongue | páchosníla | ohpochosnila |
| hand | mapára | uhmaʼpara |
| woman | ubíka | wabï’ka |
| water | huanúhue | wanu’we |
| fire | ubári | ubari |
| moon | chakakáshka | u’tyahka’ka’ka |
| maize | udáme | |
| jaguar | ótgu | |
| house | úku | uku |
See also
Further reading
- Camp, E. L.; Liccardi, M. R. (1967). Itonama, castellano e inglés. (Vocabularios Bolivianos, 6.) Riberalta: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
References
{{Reflist|1}}
- {{cite journal |last=Crevels |first=Mily |year=2002 |title=Itonama o Sihnipadara, Lengua no clasificada de la Amazonía Boliviana |journal=Estudios de Lingüística |volume=16|url = http://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/6200/1/EL_16_01.pdf|language=es}}
External links
- [http://www.language-museum.com/encyclopedia/i/itonama.php Sample of Itonama fragment]
- [http://www.ru.nl/lenguasdebolivia/ Lenguas de Bolivia] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190904080403/http://www.ru.nl/lenguasdebolivia/ |date=2019-09-04 }} (online edition)
- [https://ids.clld.org/contributions/284 Itonama] (Intercontinental Dictionary Series)
{{Languages of Bolivia}}
{{language families}}
{{South American languages}}
{{Jesuit Missions of Moxos}}
Category:Critically endangered languages
Category:Language isolates of South America