Itonama language

Itonama
Native to	Bolivia
Region	Beni Department
Ethnicity	2,900 (2006)[1]
Native speakers	5 (2007)[1]
Language family	Language isolate
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ito
Glottolog	iton1250[2]

Itonama is a moribund language isolate spoken by the Itonama people in the Amazonian lowlands of north-eastern Bolivia. Greenberg’s (1987) classification of Itonama as Paezan, a sub-branch of Macro-Chibchan, remains unsupported and Itonama continues to be considered an isolate or unclassified language.

It was spoken on the Itonomas River and Lake[3] in Beni Department.

Language contact

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Nambikwaran languages due to contact.[4]

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Diphthongs: /ai au/.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	Plain	p	t	tʲ	k	ʔ
	Ejective		tʼ		kʼ
	Voiced	b	d
Affricate	Plain		tʃ
Affricate	Ejective		tʃʼ
Fricative			s			h
Nasal		m	n
Lateral			l
Flap			ɾ
Semivowel		w		j

The postalveolar affricates /tʃ tʃʼ/ have alveolar allophones [ts tsʼ]. Variation occurs between speakers, and even within the speech of a single person.

The semivowel /w/ is realized as a bilabial fricative [β] when preceded and followed by identical vowels.

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).[5]

Vocabulary

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Itonama.[3]

gloss	Itonama
one	chash-káni
two	chash-chupa
tooth	huomóte
tongue	páchosníla
hand	mapára
woman	ubíka
water	huanúhue
fire	ubári
moon	chakakáshka
maize	udáme
jaguar	ótgu
house	úku

References

Itonama at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Itonama". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Classification of South American Indian languages. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center.
Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho de Valhery (2016). Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas (Ph.D. dissertation) (2 ed.). Brasília: University of Brasília.
Crevels, M. Who did what to whom in Magdalena. p. 3.

Crevels, Mily (2002). "Itonama o Sihnipadara, Lengua no clasificada de la Amazonía Boliviana" (PDF). Estudios de Lingüística (in Spanish). 16.

External links

Sample of Itonama fragment
Lenguas de Bolivia (online edition)
Itonama (Intercontinental Dictionary Series)

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[e18-1] Itonama at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)

[Glottolog-2] Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Itonama". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

[Loukotka-3] Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Classification of South American Indian languages. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center.

[Jolkesky-2016-4] Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho de Valhery (2016). Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas (Ph.D. dissertation) (2 ed.). Brasília: University of Brasília.

[5] Crevels, M. Who did what to whom in Magdalena. p. 3.