Tucano languages
The Tucano languages (also Tukanoa languages ) are a language family that is one of the indigenous languages of South America . It comprises 25 individual languages that are spoken in the north-west of the Amazon region on the territory of Colombia , Brazil , Ecuador and Peru . It is named after the Tucano language .
structure
The main area of distribution is given in round brackets.
-
West Tucano:
- North:
- South:
- Orejón [ore] ( Perú )
- Tanimuca:
- Tanimuca-Retuarã [tnc] (Colombia)
-
Central Tucano:
- Cubeo [cub] (Colombia)
-
East Tucano:
- Central:
- Bara:
- Waimaha [bao] (Colombia)
- Pokangá [pok] ( Brazil )
- Tuyuca [tue] (Colombia)
- Yurutí [yui] (Colombia)
- Desano:
- Desano [des] (Brazil)
- Siriano [sri] (Colombia)
- South:
- Barasana [bsn] (Colombia)
- Macuna [myy] (Colombia)
- Tatuyo:
- Carapana [cbc] (Colombia)
- Tatuyo [tav] (Colombia)
- Bara:
- North:
- Arapaso [arj] (Brazil)
- Guanano [gvc] (Brazil)
- Piratapuyo [pir] (Brazil)
- Tucano [tuo] (Brazil)
- Unclassified:
- Yahuna [ynu] (Colombia)
- Central:
-
Miriti:
- Miriti [mmv] (Brazil)
Number of speakers
The number of speakers in the individual languages is very small, usually only a few hundred.
The largest languages are:
- Cubeo (approx. 6,200 speakers in Colombia and Brazil)
- Tucano (approx. 4,600 speakers in Brazil and Colombia)
- Coreguaje (approx. 2,000 speakers in Colombia)
The following languages are already extinct:
- Macaguaje
- Miriti
- Tama
- Tetete
- Yahuna
Linguistic characteristics
The Tucano languages stand out among others. a. off through:
- prosodic nasality
- distinctive pitch
- Gender : many nominal classes
- Basic word order subject-object-verb (SOV), rarely object-verb-subject (OVS)
literature
General:
- Helmut Glück (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon Language . Metzler, Stuttgart a. Weimar 1993.
- Ernst Kausen: The language families of the world. Part 2: Africa - Indo-Pacific - Australia - America. Buske, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-87548-656-8 , pp. 985-991.
Reference grammars:
- Barasana: RD Smith (1973)
- Coreguaje: DM Cook / LL Criswell (1993)
- Cubeo: Nancy L. Morse, Michael B. Maxwell: Gramática del cuebo . Santafé de Bogotá: Lleras Camargo, 1999.
- Desano: M. Miller (1999)
- Secoya: OE Johnson / SE Levinsohn (1990)