Kunza language

Kunza
Atacama
Likanantaí
Native to Atacama Desert
Ethnicity Atacama people
Extinct ca. 1950s
Language codes
ISO 639-3 kuz
Glottolog kunz1244[1]

Kunza a.k.a. Cunza, also known as Likanantaí, Lipe, Ulipe, or Atacameño, is an extinct language isolate once spoken in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile and southern Perú (specifically in Peine, Socaire (Salar de Atacama), and Caspana) by the Lickan-antay people, who have since shifted to Spanish.

The last Kunza speaker was found in 1949, although some have been found since according to anthropologists. There are 2,000 Atacameños (W. Adelaar). A dictionary was made for Kunza.

Kaufman (1990) found a proposed connection between Kunza and the likewise unclassified Kapixaná to be plausible; however, when that language was more fully described in 2004, it turned out to be an isolate.

Kunza contains a typical 5-vowel inventory: /a, e, i, o, u/. All vowels have long counterparts, and Kunza displays contrastive vowel length.[2]

Consonants
Bilabial Alveolar Postalveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
plain ejective plain ejective plain ejective plain ejective plain ejective
Stop voiceless p pʼ t tʼ k kʼ q qʼ ʔ
voiced b
Affricate t͡s t͡ʃ t͡ʃʼ
Fricative voiceless s x χ h
voiced ɣ
Nasal m n
Approximant l j
Flap ɾ

See also

References

  1. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Kunza". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. ↑ "SAPhon – South American Phonological Inventories". linguistics.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2018-07-18.


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