Itonama language

Itonama
Region	Bolivia
Native speakers	5 (2007)
Language family	Language isolate
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ito
Glottolog	iton1250
ELP	Itonama

Itonama is a moribund language isolate spoken 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.

Phonology

Vowels

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

Diphthongs: /ai au/.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	Plain	p	t		tʲ	k	ʔ
	Ejective		tʼ			kʼ
	Voiced	b	d
Affricate	Plain		tʃ
	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).

See also

• Macro-Paesan languages

References

• 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)