Chamorro (language)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chamorro

Spoken in

Guam , Northern Mariana Islands
speaker approx. 76,700 (native speakers)
Linguistic
classification
Official status
Official language in GuamGuam Guam Northern Mariana Islands
Mariana Islands NorthernNorthern Mariana Islands 
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

ch

ISO 639 -2

cha

Chamorro is a West Malayo-Polynesian language and is one of the Austronesian languages . Chamorro is spoken in the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam , but there are also Chamorro speakers in the continental United States . Although the Marianas , including Guam to the region Micronesia be expected, the Chamorro languages of Indonesia and the Philippines is closer than the actual Micronesian languages associated Karolinska , which is based on some northern Mariana Islands ( Saipan , Anatahan and Agrihan is spoken).

In the last few decades the number of Chamorro speakers has declined overall, but various campaigns try to counteract this development.

history

It is difficult to trace the development of Chamorro, as there is no written evidence for the period up to 1668. It is also unclear where the Chamorro speakers originally came from. It is only certain that the first settlers on the Mariana Islands around 1520 BC. Arrived.

The population of the Chamorros was greatly reduced from 1668 onwards, partly due to natural disasters, but above all due to the not only peaceful proselytizing attempts of the Jesuit preachers and later almost extinguished. In the following generations, the original population mixed with Spaniards and Filipinos, and so the Chamorro language changed under external influences.

The first records of the Chamorro by the Jesuit preachers are too imprecise to be able to conclude from them what the language really looked like at that time. It is difficult to say anything about Chamorro before the Spanish influence.

The rule of the Spaniards in the Northern Mariana Islands, which lasted from 1668 to the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, was particularly influential for Chamorro. From 1899 the northern part of the islands was under the control of the German Empire, while the southern part was ceded to the USA. The language contacts resulting from the changing rulers all had an influence on the Chamorro (see vocabulary ).

Guam Island
The Northern Mariana Islands

Geographical distribution

Distribution area of ​​the Chamorro in the United States

Chamorro is spoken in the Northern Mariana Islands (approx. 14,200 speakers) and in Guam (approx. 62,500 speakers). There are also descendants of the Chamorros in the USA: In 2000 there were 58,240 Chamorros in the United States, most of them in California (20,918). How many of these people still master the Chamorro is difficult to determine.

Official status

Chamorro is one of three official languages in the Northern Mariana Islands (alongside English and Carolinian ). Chamorro is also an official language on Guam (alongside English). Although English exists as an alternative official language, Chamorro is predominantly used as the local colloquial language in both areas.

Dialects

Several dialects of Chamorro can be identified. For example, the dialect spoken in the southern part of Guam is different from that in the northern part. Overall, the dialects of Guam are again to be distinguished from the dialect of Saipan or Rota (islands of the Northern Mariana Islands). However, these differences are rather minor. Most of the time, there are differences in vocabulary: the Saipan dialect, for example, contains more loanwords from Japanese , while more English loanwords are used in Guam.

The biggest difference is between the dialect spoken in Rota and all the other islands: The Rota dialect has a more rhythmic effect than the others, as there is a more frequent rise and fall of the pitch accent.

Overall, however, the dialectal differences in Chamorro are not so great that they would cause difficulties in understanding among the speakers.

Phonetics / Phonology

Sound inventory

Consonants

bilabial labio-
dental
alveolar palatal velar glottal
stl. sth. stl. sth. stl. sth. stl. sth. stl. sth. stl. sth.
Plosives p b t d k G
Affricates c ʒ
Fricatives f s H
Nasals m n ñ ŋ
Liquid l, r
Half vowels w

The Chamorro has 18 consonants and a semi-vowel / w /. This only ever appears in conjunction with other consonants, for example in / pwenge / ('night').

Consonant clusters , i.e. combinations of several consonants, only exist in Spanish loanwords in Chamorro , such as in / gloria / ('fame') or / kwentos / ('to talk'). The clusters usually contain a maximum of two consonants.

Also geminates can make the most consonants of the Chamorro: / fatto / (to come), / sesso / (often '). An exception are the speakers of the Rota dialect, who pronounce Geminates as simple consonants.

Vowels

front back
high i u
medium e O
deep æ a

Before the influence of Spanish there were probably only the four vowels / iu æ a /. At that time, [e] and [o] were still allophones of / i / and / u / in closed syllables. However, since the two high vowels (/ i / and / u /) appeared in the closed syllables and / e / and / o / in open syllables in the Spanish loanwords, which were then adopted into Chamorro, the sound inventory of Chamorro probably became extended analogous to Spanish.

Today all six vowels have different meanings.

There are only two common diphthongs in original Chamorro words : / ai / and / ao /, as in / taitai / ('read') and / taotao / ('person').

However, if you look at the Spanish and English loanwords, at least five more diphthongs can be found: / oi ia ea oe iu /. Some examples of their occurrence are / boi / (from English 'boy') or / tiu / (from Spanish 'tio').

In principle, almost any imaginable combination of vowels is possible in loanwords like these, but the ones mentioned are the most common.

syllable

In Chamorro, syllables always contain a vowel as a syllable core, so that the following possible structures result (where C always stands for a consonant and V for a vowel):

V, CV, CVC, VC, CCV, CCVC, C + diphthong.

Intonation / intonation

The word stress in Chamorro words is usually on the penultimate syllable (Pänultima), as in / tuláika / ('exchange') or / sága / ('stay'). There are only a few exceptions to this rule.

The pattern of panultima stressing is also retained for phrases and sentences: / hafa malægó 'mu / (' What do you want? ').

Spanish loanwords, on the other hand, often retain their original stress pattern, so that the panultima does not necessarily have the word accent.

In some words, the emphasis is also distinctive, such as / móhon / ('want') and / mohón / ('limit').

grammar

Chamorro is an agglutinating language : roots are affixed to express grammatical functions. In fact, many affixes are used in Chamorro , although there are both derivative affixes and inflectional affixes , as is also the case in German . These are implemented as prefixes , suffixes or infixes .

In Chamorro, affixes also serve, among other things, to transform one part of speech into another. With the infix -um-, for example, both adjectives and nouns can be used verbally:

katpenteru ('carpenter')
K um atpenteru yo '. ('I'm going to be a carpenter.')

Parts of speech and their morphology

noun

  • Number : When declining the nouns in Chamorro, the number plays a role. There are two ways to indicate plural at the noun: On the one hand, as with verbs, the man prefix is ​​used when the noun is used as a predicate of a sentence:
man-emfetmera hit
PL-nurse we
'We are nurses.'

If this is not the case, then the noun is also followed by siha (the 3rd person plural pronoun of the yo paradigm) as a plural marker. However, since in many cases the man prefix already indicates the plural, siha is often omitted for economic reasons.

In addition to this systematic plural designation, there are also some irregular nouns that have their own plural forms. These are always nouns that refer to people:

lahi ('man') - lalahi ('men')
palao'an ('woman') - famalao'an ('women')
  • Gender : The Chamorro does not make a gender distinction, as is common in German, for example.

Verbs

The system of inflection of verbs in Chamorro is relatively complicated. The categories indicated by prefixes directly on the verb are mode, number and person:

  • Mode : Here, in Chamorro, a distinction is first made between realis and irrealis . In addition, there is also an imperative that is formed in the same way as the future tense. Other modes are indicated in Chamorro not in the morphology of the verb, but through the use of certain expressions. The conditional can be expressed, for example, by Yanggen (if ') used for the construction of the sentence.
  • Number : The Chamorro differentiates between plural, dual (the form for two people) and singular.
  • Person : It should be noted here that in the first person plural, a distinction is made between the inclusive and exclusive 'we', depending on whether the person addressed is included or not.
  • Aspect : Aspect is also indicated by verbs in Chamorro, but not by prefixes. A distinction is made between the neutral aspect, which is not marked, and the progressive . The progressive is characterized by reduplication: taitai ('read') - tataitai ('be there to read').
  • Tense : In Chamorro, the tense is not expressed directly on the verb, but on the sentence level. Chamorro differentiates between future and non-future, the latter including present and past. There are a large number of future markers to indicate the future, with para being the most common. It is placed in front of the verb phrase:
Hafa para U.N bida?
what FUT you do
,What will you do?'

In addition to the various markers, the future tense is generally characterized by three properties :

  1. The basic form of the verb (i.e. without affixes) is used.
  2. The hu pronouns are always used (see pronouns ).
  3. The man prefixes to mark the plural and to identify an indefinite object become fan .
  • Diathesis : The passive voice is also formed in Chamorro with the help of the affixing of the verb: the infix -in- is used when the agent is in the singular or dual, the prefix ma- when the agent is plural. There is also an antipassive that is common in ergative languages . This is formed with the prefix man- (in realis) or fan- (in unrealis).

However, these categories mode, number and aspect are not displayed in the same way for all verbs. For example, with intransitive verbs in realis, the person category does not matter - in this paradigm only mode and number are marked. To express the plural, regardless of the person, the prefix man- is always added to the verb.

Adjectives

If the adjective is used as a predicate of a sentence, the plural is marked on it, in the same way as with intransitive verbs and nouns: If the subject is in the plural, the prefix man- is added.

Man-magof siha gi gipot
PL-happy they at party
'You got happy at the party.'

The comparative is also implemented with the help of affixes. If two things or people are compared with one another, the adjective is given the suffix -ña , if a mere increase is to be expressed, the prefix lá'- is used . There is no possibility in Chamorro to use adjectives adverbially. There is a separate class of expressions for modifying verbs, which is, however, different from adjectives. Whether these expressions should be called adverbs is debatable. While Costenoble assumed this in 1940, Topping in 1973 referred to words that would be suitable for this class as modifiers, since they can also appear as predicates or to modify nouns.

pronoun

There are four classes of pronouns in Chamorro:

  • yo pronouns can besaid to be absolutivic pronouns following the verb. They are mostly used as an object, but in some cases they can also take on the subject role.
  • Possessive pronouns are tied morphemes and are added to the corresponding nouns. Since they trigger a shift of the word stress, they may as clitics are signified kareta ( 'Auto') - karetá- hu (my car ')
  • Emphatic pronouns are used when the subject of the sentence is to be emphasized (see focus ).

prepositions

Most of the prepositions in Chamorro come from Spanish. This suggests that before the influence of Spanish there were other ways of expressing such concepts.

The prepositions from Chamorro are gi (many different meanings), giya (for place names), as (for place names ), para ('to') and ginen ('from'). Here is an example:

Matto gue gi painge
come hey in last night
'He came last night.'

The borrowed Spanish prepositions are to be distinguished into those that are also used in combination with Chamorro words and those that only appear in idiomatic expressions. The former include: desde , asta (Span. Hasta), sin , pot (Span. Por), and kontra (Span. Contra). The prepositions di (Span. De) and kon (Span. Con), on the other hand, are only used in fixed idioms.

items

Chamorro owns general articles and articles for proper names. The articles for proper names are si and as (for names of persons) and iya (for place names). These articles are mandatory, even if there is usually no equivalent for them in the German translation:

Si Nana. (,Mother')
Si Maga'lahi. ('Governor, President')

The general articles are i , ni, and nu . Here i is used for definite, specific nouns, while the meaning of ni and nu in German can often only be paraphrased with the help of prepositions.

In addition to these articles, which come from Chamorro, three articles have also been borrowed from Spanish: un , la and las . However, all three only occur in fixed turns. For example, Las is only used to announce the time:

Dies pasao las tres ('Ten past three')

syntax

Principle types

Four basic types can be distinguished in Chamorro:

  • Transitive sentences consist of a subject, the verb and an object, with the unmarked word order being VSO. However, it can also be changed without any difference in meaning to SVO.
Ha fahan si Juan i chandia
hey buy ART Juan ART watermelon
'Juan bought the watermelon.'
  • Even in intransitive sentences that only consist of subject and verb, the verb is in most cases sentence initial:
Bumabaila i palao'an
dance ART woman
'The woman danced.'
  • As state sets rates are called, which contain no verb. Either a noun or a modifier serves as a predicate of the sentence. In the following sentence, the noun mediku ('doctor') is the predicate:
Medicu si Juan
doctor ART Juan
'Juan is a doctor.'
  • As existential sets finally refers to kits, which are formed with certain irregular verbs. These include gai ('have'), tai ('not have'), gaige ('be present') and ya ('like'). With these verbs, the sentences always describe the (non-) existence of a thing or a person in a place. The following example illustrates this type of sentence:
Gaige yo ' gi eskuela
be present I. in school
,I was in the school.'

ask

Questions are formed with 'question words'. There are in turn a large number of these. They come first in the sentence, while there are no other rules for word order in questions.

A very general question word is kao , which turns sentences into decision-making questions :

Medicu gue '. (,He is a doctor.')
Kao mediku gue '? ('Is he a doctor?')

Two other common question words are hafa ('what') and manu ('which' / 'where'):

Hafa este? (,What's this?')
Manu na mannok i ga'-mu? ('Which chicken is yours?')

Actant marking

Since there is no in Chamorro ditransitive but only transitive are verbs, there are more than one object in the set. This is marked according to its definition: An indefinite object contains a different identifier than a definite one. This phenomenon is described in more detail in a separate section .

negation

Various negation words are available in Chamorro to express the negation. Most often ti is used, which can either be placed in front of the entire sentence or just individual words to be negated:

Ti umo'mak yo ' nigap
NEG bath I. yesterday
'I didn't bathe yesterday.'
Ti thank you i tronko
NEG big ART tree
'The tree is not big.'

Similar to the negation word ti , there are a number of other markers that can mostly only be used in certain linguistic contexts. Some examples are: taya ('there is not'), taya'nai ('never') and ahe ' (' no ').

focus

There are different types of focus in Chamorro, which are marked in different ways. Here, the focus marking is illustrated using two examples: agent focus and benefit active focus. In both cases the focus is expressed through affixes and through the choice of pronouns and articles; the word order is not relevant for the focusing of elements in the Chamorro.

With the agent focus , the agent of the sentence is emphasized. This happens on the one hand with one of the two affixes -um- and man- (with indefinite object) and on the other hand with the emphatic pronoun guahu :

Hu li'e 'i palao'an. ('I saw the woman.') - without focus
Guahu l um i'e 'i palao'an. (' I am the one who saw the woman.')

The Benefaktiv focus focuses on those who benefit from an action. For this purpose the suffix -iyi and the article i or si are used:

Hu kanta yi si Maria. ('I sang for Maria .')

In addition to these focus types, there are a few more, such as the target focus, which, however, are formally identified in a comparable manner.

Differentiation between definite and indefinite objects

An interesting phenomenon in Chamorro is the way definite and indefinite objects are distinguished. The structure of the verb, the choice of the subject pronoun and the article in front of the object are relevant for this.

The following examples show how much the corresponding sentences differ from one another:

Ha pacha i tronko
hey touch ART tree
'He touched the tree.'
Ma-macha gue ' tronko
INDF OBJ-touch hey tree
'He touched a tree.'

The following table shows the key differences:

Definite object Indefinite object
Subject in the singular:
no prefix man prefix before verb ('indefinite object marker')
hu - subject pronoun yo - subject pronouns
definite i -article before object NP no article before object NP
Subject in the plural:
no prefix additional man prefix for plural at verb

On the one hand, there is a marker for indefinite objects, namely the prefix man- . If the subject is in the plural, this is only marked in the case of an indefinite object on the verb, namely by a further man prefix.

In addition, the choice of the subject pronoun is also decisive, if one is available:

If the patient is definite, the agent is coded ergatively, i.e. with a Hu pronoun (in the above example: ha - 3rd Ps. However, if the patient is indefinite, the agent must not be coded ergative, which is why a yo'- pronoun (in the second example: gue - 3rd Ps.Sg.), i.e. an absolutivic, is used here.

At first glance, this is unusual, since in both cases there is a transitive sentence and the absolute actually only marks the subject in intransitive sentences. One speaks here of split ergativity , since in the case of an indefinite patient “the participation system of the Chamorro is split into two parts, an ergative and an accusative”. This can be explained by the fact that sentences with an indefinite patient are not “fully valid transitive constructions” in which the ergativity becomes effective.

There are also verbs that have different verb forms for sentences with definite and indefinite objects. A particularly clear example is the following, in which 'to eat' is expressed once by the verb kanno and once by chocho . ( An infix -um- has been added to the word chocho in the following example .)

Hu kanno ' i ates. ('I ate the sugar apple.')
Ch <um> ocho yo 'ates. ('I ate a sugar apple.')

The formal markings that are typical for the identification of indefinite objects can, however, also occur in intransitive sentences that do not contain any object. This then corresponds to a transitive sentence with an unspecified object:

Man -espi ~ pia gue '
INDF OBJ-look ~ PROG hey
'He's looking around.'

vocabulary

Chamorro was shaped by various linguistic influences. This of course primarily includes Spanish, but there is also an influence from German , Japanese and English . Only the lexicon was influenced, not the grammar of the Chamorro.

The strong Spanish influence is evident in loan words, phrases and some borrowings from the Spanish phonetic system (see phonetic system ). The following example illustrates how loanwords were adapted in the Chamorro:

Spanish: libro → Chamorro: lebplo

German had little influence on the language because the Germans only had a brief administrative activity. It is similar with Japanese. Here, too, there are only a few loan words in the lexicon (e.g. chirigame ' -' toilet paper ').

English plays a bigger role. There are also adapted loanwords here:

English: bowling → Chamorro: bumóling

Whole phrases have also been adopted, for example I mean . Today, English plays a major role in the Marianas and Guam, especially in the younger generation, so there is a fear that increasing Americanization will displace the Chamorro.

font

Chamorro was written down for the first time in 1668 by Father Sanvitores. Later there were also many texts by Spanish priests, so that Spanish had a considerable influence on the Chamorro writing system. At that time, however, the alphabet was still very imprecise because not all sounds were recorded.

This imprecise version became a problem when the Chamorro generation was the first to systematically learn to read and write the language after the Second World War . For this reason, the Chamorro Orthography Committee established a new writing system in 1971, whereby not only the alphabetical symbols were determined, but also conventions for upper and lower case, for the writing of names and rules for how sounds should be represented in certain environments.

According to this convention, the alphabet comprises the following characters:

a, b, ch, d, e, f, g, h, i, '( crackling sound ), k, l, m, n, ñ, ng, o, p, r, s, t, u, y

Previous research

Examples from Callistus' Chamorro dictionary in Stanislaus von Prowazek : The German Marianas (1913)

Besides the work of Father Sanvitores, several other grammars on Chamorro have been published. Examples include those of Safford 1909, Callistus 1910 or Costenoble 1940.

In the last few years a number of papers have finally been written that deal with certain grammatical phenomena of language. The 1998 book by Chung ( "The Design of Agreement. Evidence from Chamorro" ), for example, is an extensive work on congruence marking in Chamorro. In 2004, Chung published another book in collaboration with Ladusaw ( "Restriction and Saturation" ).

In addition, Chamorro has been treated in linguistic texts in recent years mainly because of its system of split ergativity.

Since 2009, the Chamorrica project has also been working on the English re-editing of works about the Chamorro.

literature

  • P. Callistus: Chamorro Dictionary; along with a Chamorro grammar. Typis Societatis Missionum ad Exteros, Hong Kong 1910. (ie Father Calliste Lopinot )
  • Paul Carano, Pedro C. Sanchez: A Complete History of Guam. Charles E. Tuttle Co., Tokyo 1964.
  • H. Costenoble: The Chamoro Language. M. Nijhoff, 'S-Gravenhage 1940.
  • Sandra Chung: The Design of Agreement. Evidence from Chamorro. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1998.
  • Sandra Chung, William A. Ladusaw: Restriction and Saturation. The MIT Press, Cambridge 2004.
  • Georg Fritz : Chamorro grammar . In: Communications from the seminar for oriental languages ​​at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, 6, 1903, pp. 1–27.
  • Georg Fritz : Chamorro dictionary . Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1904
  • Steve Pagel: Spanish in Asia and Oceania . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2010.
  • Rafael Rodríguez-Ponga: Del español al chamorro: Lenguas en contacto en el Pacífico . Ediciones Gondo, Madrid 2009, www.edicionesgondo.com
  • William E. Safford: The Chamorro Language of Guam. WH Lowdermilk and Co., Washington, DC 1909.
  • Thomas Stolz: Ergativity for the bloodiest beginners. Bremen Linguistics Workshop, source 1999, http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/iaas/workshop/ergativ/tstolz.pdf March 27, 2008.
  • Laura Thompson: The Native Culture of the Marianas Islands. Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu 1945.
  • Donald M. Topping: Chamorro Reference Grammar. The University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu 1973.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Laura Thompson: The Native Culture of the Marianas Islands. Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu 1945.
  2. ethnologue.com
  3. spc.int
  4. Donald M. Topping: Chamorro Reference Grammar. The University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu 1973, p. 9.
  5. Thomas Stolz: Ergativ for the bloodiest beginners. University of Bremen, pp. 1–12.
  6. ^ Sandra Chung: The Design of Agreement. Evidence from Chamorro. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1998, p. 38.
  7. Donald M. Topping: Chamorro Reference Grammar. The University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu 1973, pp. 210f.
  8. Thomas Stolz: Ergativity for the bloodiest beginners. P. 10. Source: Bremer Linguistik Workshop 1999, http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/iaas/workshop/ergativ/tstolz.pdf [27. March 2008]
  9. Pride: Ergativity for the bloodiest beginners. P. 10 1999.
  10. Chamorrica ( Memento of March 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). Website of the Chamorro Linguistics International Network (CHiN)