Nambikwara languages
The Nambikwara languages (also: Nambikuara , Nambiquara ; English Nambiquaran ) are among the indigenous languages of South America . They are spoken by the Nambikwara who live in the Amazon region of Brazil in the states of Rondônia and Mato Grosso .
The language family consists of only three languages with very few speakers (the ISO 639-3 code is given in square brackets ):
- Nord-Nambikwara [mbg] (also Mamaindê ; approx. 136 speakers)
- South Nambikwara [nab] (approx. 1,150 speakers)
- Sabanê [sae] (approx. 60 speakers)
Linguistic characteristics
Nasal vowels , laryngealized vowels and aspirated consonants stand out in the sound system . The Nambikwara languages are also tonal languages with 3–4 contour tones:
- falling
- increasing
- just
- deep (only in North Nambikwara)
There is a system of nominal classifiers .
The basic word order is subject-object-verb (SOV).
literature
- Gabriel Antunes de Araujo: A Grammar of Sabanê. A Nambikwaran language (= LOT International Series. 94). Landelijke Onderzoekschool Taalwetenschap et al., Utrecht 2004, ISBN 90-76864-59-4 (also: Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit, dissertation, 2004).
- Helmut Glück (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon Language. Metzler, Stuttgart et al. 1993, ISBN 3-476-00937-8 .
- Ivan Lowe: Nambiquara. In: Robert MW Dixon , Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (Eds.): The Amazonian languages. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1999, ISBN 0-521-57021-2 , pp. 268-291.
- Barbara Kroeker: Aspectos da língua Nambikuara. SIL, Cuiabá 2003, ( PDF; 254 kB ).
- Menno Kroeker: A descriptive grammar of Nambikuara. In: International Journal of American Linguistics. Vol. 67, Issue 1, 2001, ISSN 0020-7071 , pp. 1-87, JSTOR 1265810 .
- Menno H. Kroeker: Gramática descritiva da língua Nambikuara. SIL, Cuiabá 2001, ( PDF; 366 kB ).
- Menno H. Kroeker: Dicionário escolar bilíngue Nambikuara - Português, Português - Nambikuara. SIL, Porto Velho no year, ( PDF; 905 kB ).
- Fr David Price: The Nambiquara linguistic family. In: Anthropological Linguistics. Vol. 20, No. 1, 1978, ISSN 0003-5483 , pp. 14-37, JSTOR 30027610 .
- Stella Virginia Telles de Araujo Pereira Lima: Fonologia e gramática Latundê / Lakondê. Amsterdam 2002, (dialect of the North Nambikwara; Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit, dissertation, 2002).
Web links
- Nambiquaran. In: M. Paul Lewis, Gary F. Simons, Charles D. Fennig (Eds.): Ethnologue. Languages of the World. 19th edition. Online version. SIL International, Dallas TX 2016.