Resígaro

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Resígaro is an indigenous language from the Arawak family , spoken in the Loreto department of Peru . Currently, Resígaro is a language on the brink of extinction. It was spoken in northeastern Peru in the villages of Puerto Isango and Brillo Nuevo on the Yaguasyacu , a tributary of the Ampiyacu that flows into the Amazon in Pebas . The main languages ​​of all Resígaros today are Bora or Ocaina , both from the Bora-Witoto family, with Resígaro being a language with more limited use.

History and dissemination

Little information is available on the history of the Resígaros, as is the case with other ethnic groups in the region such as the Boras, Witotos and Ocainas. Thomas Whiffen came across the Resígaros in 1915 while researching the aforementioned indigenous tribes who settled in Colombia on the banks of the Japurá ( Caquetá ), north of the Río Cahuinari . Even at that time, the residents were a minority in the region (around a thousand individuals, compared to around 15,000 Boras). The lexical evidence indicates that the inhabitants of this region come from the regions further north and further east of Içana and Vaupés . The Resígaro language has borrowed numerous elements of their language from contact with the Boras, but also has common vocabulary with the Tariana and Baniwa , who live in their original region. At the end of 2016, there was only one Resígaro spokesman after his sister, Rosa Andrade Ocagane, was killed.

Classification

Resígaro belongs to the northern branch of the Arawak languages, within which it is the most southern spoken language. Among the languages ​​of the northern branch, Resígaro has the most lexical matches with Tariana and Kurripako in the language area Vaupés-Içana further north. This suggests that the Resígaros migrated from a more northerly settlement area to the south. The contact with the Bora-Witoto languages ​​led to an extensive restructuring of the Resígaro grammar, which for this reason is now an atypical Arawak language. Resígaro was originally classified as a language related to the Bora, as both share around 25% of the vocabulary, until better data revealed that Resígaro shares a little over 50% of the vocabulary with Tariana and Baniwa, the languages ​​of the upper Vaupés. In terms of grammar, Resígaro has many structures in common with Bora due to grammatical borrowings. Since the Resígaros settled outside of the upper Vaupés area, they were subject to the linguistic influence of Bora and Witoto. In fact, all Resígaro speakers were bilingual or trilingual and spoke a different Witoto language besides Resígaro. This has led to a far-reaching restructuring of the Resígaro grammar, so that Resígaro is grammatically very different from them despite the lexical relationship with the Arawak languages ​​of the upper Vaupés.

Linguistic description

Bora-Witoto borrowings are present in Resígaro both in the basic vocabulary, especially in pronouns and nominal suffixes, and in the secondary vocabulary.

literature

  • Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald y RMW Dixon: Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance , Research Center for Linguistic Typology, La Trobe University, 2001, ISBN 0-19-829981-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://etnolinguistica.wdfiles.com/local--files/tese%3Aallin-1976/allin_1976_resigaro_complete.pdf P. 15 (English) Accessed on January 9, 2018
  2. ↑ http://etnolinguistica.wdfiles.com/local--files/biblio%3Awhiffen-1915-amazons/whiffen_1915_amazons.pdf P. 56 (English) Retrieved on January 7, 2018
  3. ↑ Asesinada en Perú la última mujer hablante de resígaro (Spanish)
  4. ↑ Perú: asesinan a la última mujer que hablaba el idioma resígaro (Spanish)
  5. ↑ [1] (English) Retrieved January 8, 2018