Arabela language

Arabela
Tapweyokwaka
Native to Peru
Ethnicity 500 Arabela (2002)[1]
Native speakers
 50 (2002)[1]
Zaparoan

  • Arabela–Andoa

    • Arabela
Official status
Official language in
  Peru[2]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 arl
Glottolog arab1268[3]

Arabela is a nearly extinct indigenous American language of the Zaparoan family spoken in two Peruvian villages in tropical forest along the Napo tributary of the Arabela river.

Also known as Chiripuno and Chiripunu, it is spoken by fewer than 50 people out of an ethnic population of about 500.[1]

Since there are so few speakers of Arabela left, its speakers speak either Spanish or Quechua as a second language. The literacy rate for Arabela as a first language is about 10–30%, and about 50–75% for a second language. It uses a SOV word order.[1]

Like all native languages in Peru, it has an official status in areas where it is spoken.[2]

The language and its speakers

Arabela is a language of the Zaparoan family of languages. Zaparoan tongues were once widely spoken in the rain forest of north-eastern Peru, but Zaparoan-speaking people have been decimated by diseases, wars with neighboring native groups, and by quasi-enslavement during the rubber boom. Most Zaparoan communities have shifted to Lamas Quechua or Spanish, while others have been incorporated into Shuar groups. The few surviving Zaparoan languages are all severely endangered. Among those, Arabela is most closely related to Zaparo (the only one still spoken), Andoa and Conambo.

Current situation

The dominant languages of the area are Kichwa and Spanish, and they are both widely spoken by Arabelas. Kichwa has been the default language for native communities in the area since the rubber boom era, and has spread through trade mixed marriages. It is, however, losing ground to Spanish in the younger generations. The use of Arabela is restricted to a small elderly fraction of the population. The language is official per the Constitution of Peru, but this did not stop its decline. There is no written literature in Arabela, but the language has been used in education by the Peruvian government, which has issued some school material in it. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been translated into Arabela in 1988.[4]

Dialectal divisions

There is no dialectal division among known Arabela speakers. A small group, called Pananuyuri, separated from other Arabelas roughly a century ago. Their fate is unknown but they may have survived, in which case their dialect is likely to have somewhat diverged from the other speakers'.

Phonology

The Arabela phonemic inventory is quite typical for a Zaparoan language. It has five places of articulation and a vowel inventory of five vowels common within the family.

Vowels

Vowels
Front Near-front Back
Close i ɪ u
Near-close o
Open a  

Consonants

Consonants
Bilabial Dental /
Alveolar		 Postalveolar Velar Glottal
Stop [p] [t] [k]
Fricative [s] [ʃ] [ɦ]
Nasal [m] [n]
Approximant [w] [j]
Trill [r]

Morphology

The noun

Arabela has no grammatical gender but for a few words, mostly describing persons, the sex can be specified by adding a suffix :

Arabela has two grammatical numbers, singular and plural. The plural is generally added by adding a suffix to the singular, the nature of this suffix varying according to the pluralized word.

In a few cases, however, the plural can be formed through suffix substitution, or by using a different root altogether.

A numbers of other word form their plural by removing a singular specific suffix

Pronouns

Arabela has a complex pronominal system, similar to the one of the other zaparoan languages and distinguishes between active and passive personal pronouns. Active pronouns act as subjects in independent clause and as objects in dependent ones.

Personal pronouns

Personal pronouns
First singular Second singular Third singular First plural inclusive First plural exclusive Second plural Third plural
Independent clause subject janiya
-nijiya		 quiajaniya
quiaa
-quiaa		 nojuajua
-Vri		 paa
-pue
paajaniya		 canaa niajaniya
niaa		 nojori
Independent clause object cua quia na
quinio		 pa canaa nia nojori
na
-no

Anaphoric pronouns

The verbal ending -no is used as an anaphoric. It can also mark the subject of a subordinate sentence when it refers to the object of the main sentence.

Demonstrative pronouns

Arabela has three kinds of demonstrative pronouns :

Interrogative pronouns

Arabela has a rather restricted of interrogative pronouns, composed of:

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Arabela at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. 1 2 "CONSTITUCION POLÍTICA DEL PERÚ 1993". February 17, 2006. Archived from the original on 21 February 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-02. Artículo 48º Son idiomas oficiales el castellano y, en las zonas donde predominen, también lo son el quechua, el aimara y las demás lenguas aborígenes, según la ley.
  3. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Arabela". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  4. ↑ The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Arabela

Bibliography

External links

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