Pemon language

Pemon
Arecuna
Ingarikó, Kapon
Native to Venezuela, Brazil, Guyana
Ethnicity Pemon
Native speakers
 (6,000 cited 1990–2006)[1]
Cariban
  • Venezuelan Carib
    • Pemóng–Panare
      • Pemóng
        • Pemon
Dialects
  • Camaracoto
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3 aoc
Glottolog pemo1248[2]

The Pemon language, or Arekuna, is an indigenous language of the Cariban family spoken by some 30,000 Pemon people, in Venezuela's Southeast, particularly in the Canaima National Park, in the Roraima State of Brazil and in Guyana.

It is one of several closely related languages called Ingarikó and Kapong.

Camaracoto may be a distinct language.

Typology

The Pemon language's syntax type is SOV with alternation to OVS.[3]

Writing

Pemon was an oral language until the 20th century. Then efforts were made to produce dictionaries and grammars, primarily by Catholic missionaries, specially Armellada and Gutiérrez Salazar. The Latin alphabet has been used, adding diacritic signs to represent some phonemes not existing in Spanish.[4]

Phonology

Vowels

Pemon has the following vowels:

 FrontCentralBack
Close iɨu
Open-mid eɵo
Open  a 

There are still texts only using Spanish characters, without distinctive characters for /o/ or /ɵ/. Diphthong sounds are [aɪ, au, ɔɪ, eɪ].

Consonants

Labial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar
Stop p t k
Fricative s
Nasal m n
Tap/Flap ɾ
Approximant j w

Allophones of /s n k j/ are [tʃ ŋ ʔ ʎ].[5]

Grammar

Pronouns in Pemon are:

Pemon English
yuré I, me
amäre you (singular)
muere, mesere he, she
urekon we
ina we (exclusive)
amärenokon you (plural)
ichamonan they, them

References

  1. ↑ Pemon at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Pemon". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ La Transitividad en Japrería Archived 2011-07-21 at the Wayback Machine..
  4. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-01-17. Retrieved 2009-01-17. Guide for Pemon (Spanish)
  5. ↑ Edwards, Walter F. (1978). A Preliminary Sketch of Arekuna (Carib) Phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics.

Literature

  • Gutiérrez Salazar, Msr Mariano: Gramática Didáctica de la Lengua Pemón. Caracas 2001. ISBN 980-244-282-8.
  • De Armellada, Fray Cesáreo y Olza, Jesús,s.j.: Gramática de la lengua pemón (morfosintaxis) (1999) Caracas, Publicaciones Ucab, Vicariato Apostólico del Caroní y Universidad Católica del Táchira. 289 pages.
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