Kanoê language

Although Kanoê is generally considered to be a language isolate, there have been various proposals linking it with other languages and language families.[3]

Van der Voort (2005) observes similarities among Kanoê, Kwaza, and Aikanã, but believes the evidence is not strong enough to definitively link the three languages together as part of a single language family.[4]

Price (1978) proposes a relationship with the Nambikwaran languages,[5] while Kaufman (1994, 2007) suggests that Kunza is related.[6][7]

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with Kwaza, Aikanã, and the Nambikwaran languages due to contact.[8]

The first contact of the Kanoé people with the "white man" brought a lot of death through sickness. Many of the people died of pertussis, measles, and stomach problems since they did not have the medicine needed to fight the diseases that were available to the "white man". There was also a lot of death due to conflicts with the farmers in the area.[2]

The Kanoê people can be found in two main areas, the banks of the Guaporé River and the Omorê River. Their traditional territories, particularly Rio Omeré Indigenous Territory, are located in Corumbiara and Chupinguaia municipalities of Rondonia state.[9]^: 659 The main population, living by Guaporé River, share the land with other indigenous people and a long history of cohabitation with the "white man". Most of them have been assimilated into mainstream Brazilian society and are married to people belonging to other indigenous groups. Only three of them still speak the Kanoê language today.

By the Omerê River, a single family of Kanoê can be found, with much less influence from the Brazilian society. Having fled into a forest reserve, this group is considered isolated indigenous people, only allowing outside contact in 1995 after many years of attempts by the Ethno Environmental Protection Front. As of 2003, only four people remained of this Kanoê family, with two of them being monolingual Kanoê speakers. The area by the Omerê River is believed to be the original territory of the Kanoê people by Victor Dequech (1942) and Etta Becker-Donner (1955).

For a long time Kanoê was too poorly attested to classify. Various proposals were advanced on little evidence; Price (1978) for example thought Kanoê might be one of the Nambikwaran languages. When it was finally described in some detail, by Bacelar (2004), it turned out to be a language isolate.[10]

The first written study of the Kanoê language available today, dates back to 1943 when Stanislav Zach published a vocabulary of the Kanoê tribe,[11] which was later updated in 1963 by Cestmír Loukotka.

A preliminary report of the phonological features of the Kanoê language was published by Laércio Bacelar in 1992,[12] with a second report and an analysis of the phonology published in 1994.[13] Bacelar and Cleiton Pereira wrote a paper on the morphosyntax of the language in 1996.[14] And in 1998 a paper on the negation and litotes of the language was published by Bacelar and Augusto Silva Júnior.[15] Since then, Laércio Bacelar has been the main linguist investigating the language and working alongside the Kanoê people. In 2004 he published a detailed description of its phonology, grammar and syntax.[16]

A project called Etnografia e Documentação da Lingua Kanoé is underway with a lexicographic and ethnographic approach to record auditory and written data of the Kanoê language. The project is currently coordinated by Laércio Nora Bacelar, a Brazilian linguist, and is funded by FUNAI - Museu do Índio and by UNESCO. The project also has the support of the entire Kanoê community from both the Guaropé and the Omorê rivers.

Kanoê is a polysynthetic language, where the more complex words are the verbs (Payne 1997). It is also primarily an agglutinative language, and many words are formed by simple roots, juxtaposition and suffixation.[10] The gender can be expressed by suffixation or by a hyperonym, and while Kanoê does not make a distinction of number, it does make a distinction between uncountable and countable nouns, where the suffix {-te} is added[16] . The syntax order of Kanoê follows SOV = subject + object + verb.[10]

In the Kanoê language, the process of morphological reduplication is used to form frequentative verbs. For example, manamana 'kneading', or mañumañu 'chewing'. Although some names show reduplication, it can have an onomatopoeic motivation instead of a morphologic one - most names with reduplication are names for animals and birds, in which the phonetic sequence of the reduplication do seem to imitate the sounds characteristic of said animals, for example kurakura 'chicken' or tsõjtsõj 'hummingbird'.[16]

Indefinite pronouns

There are a total of four indefinite pronouns, which are used based on the object. The nuvi and tsyke pronouns can be used with the gender suffix {-kɨ̃j} for masculine and {-nake} for feminine.

For humans For non-humans nuvi who/someone naj something tsyke someone else tsake something else For Example: tsyke Someone -kɨ̃j else-M tũ-o die-INTR e-re DECL-AUX tsyke -kɨ̃j tũ-o e-re Someone else-M die-INTR DECL-AUX "Someone else died." oj 3SG naj something topi-e rotten-NMLZ u-ro eat-CLV e-re DECL-AUX oj naj topi-e u-ro e-re 3SG something rotten-NMLZ eat-CLV DECL-AUX "He ate something bad." Syntax The Kanoê language is a nominative-accusative language, given that the subjects of both transitive and intransitive verbal actions are marked the same way, while the object is marked differently. For subjects of either intransitive or transitive verbal actions, the suffix {-ro} 'CLV' is added to the verb, and for direct objects of transitive sentences, the suffix {-to} 'TR' is added to the verb.[16] For example: a. kani child iriri-ø-ro run-3-CLV e-re DECL-AUX kani iriri-ø-ro e-re child run-3-CLV DECL-AUX "The child ran." b. pja POSS.2SG e woman ña POSS.1SG kani child vara-ø-ro-ø-to speak-3-CLV-3-TR n-e-re 3-DECL-AUX pja e ña kani vara-ø-ro-ø-to n-e-re POSS.2SG woman POSS.1SG child speak-3-CLV-3-TR 3-DECL-AUX "Your woman is speaking with my child." In example a. it can be seen that the intransitive verb {iriri-} "run" takes one subject kani "child", and the morpheme {-ro} which attaches the subject as the agent of the verbal action. In example b. the transitive verb {vara-} "speak" takes a subject, pja e "your woman", which the morpheme {-ro} attaches as the subject of the verbal action; and an object, ña kani "my child", which the morpheme {-to} attaches as the object of the verbal action. Examples a. and b. show that the morphemes for subjects of transitive or intransitive verbal actions are the same. c. jato POSS.1PL atiti corn epæ-ro born-3-CLV n-e-re 3-DECL-AUX jato atiti epæ-ro n-e-re POSS.1PL corn born-3-CLV 3-DECL-AUX lit. "Our corn is being born." d. ævo man atiti corn paj-ø-ro break-3-TR e-re DECL-AUX ævo atiti paj-ø-ro e-re man corn break-3-TR DECL-AUX "The man harvested the corn." (lit. "The man broke the corn") Comparing examples c. and d. it can be seen that the morpheme {-ro} is used when atiti "corn" is the subject of the verbal action, and {-to} is used when atiti "corn" is the object of the verbal action. It shows that morphemes for subjects and objects of verbal actions are different. Semantics A field study by Bacelar (2004), shows that there are no inflections for number in the language. even though the Kanoê language uses the pluralizer {-te} to interpret nouns as a collective derived by the suffixation. Mass nouns cannot be pluralized.     kani          kani-te child children     kwini          kwini-te fish school of fish Quantifier The most used method to express quantity in the Kanoê language is the anteposition of the quantifier arakere "many". It is presumed that the quantifier arakere is formed by a litotes mechanism and that its internal structure follows {ara-} "few" + {-k} 'NEG' + {-e} 'DECL' + {-re} 'AUX'.[16]     kani          arakere kani child many children     mapi          arakere mapi arrow many arrows aj 1SG ara k-e-re few-NEG-DECL-AUX kani child õ-tsi 1-have mo-e-re APL-DECL-AUX aj {ara k-e-re} kani õ-tsi mo-e-re 1SG few-NEG-DECL-AUX child 1-have APL-DECL-AUX "I have many children." oj 3PL tu-kwæ̃ brother-MASC ara-tũ-kwæ̃ few-brother-MASC k-e-re NEG-DECL-AUX oj tu-kwæ̃ ara-tũ-kwæ̃ k-e-re 3PL brother-MASC few-brother-MASC NEG-DECL-AUX "He has many brothers." (lit. "He has not few brothers") The quantifier arakere can also be used together with numerals to change its meaning to "few": mini today aj 1SG [mow-mow two-two ara k-e few-NEG-NMZ mapi] arrow õ-tsi 1-have mo-e-re APL-DECL-AUX mini aj [mow-mow {ara k-e} mapi] õ-tsi mo-e-re today 1SG two-two few-NEG-NMZ arrow 1-have APL-DECL-AUX "Today I have only four arrows." aj 1SG re kill õ-e-re 1-DECL-AUX [pja one ara k-e few-NEG-NMZ uromu] alligator aj re õ-e-re [pja {ara k-e} uromu] 1SG kill 1-DECL-AUX one few-NEG-NMZ alligator "I killed only one alligator." The Kanoê language also has an interrogative quantifier nẽtoe "how many" which is used at the beginning of the sentence: nẽtoe how many kani child tuvo sick ni-tsi 3-INT nẽtoe kani tuvo ni-tsi {how many} child sick 3-INT "How many children are sick?" nẽtoe how many kani child mi 2SG pe-tsi 2-have mi-tsi 2-INT nẽtoe kani mi pe-tsi mi-tsi {how many} child 2SG 2-have 2-INT "How many children do you have?" See also Wiktionary has a Swadesh list at Appendix:Kanoê Swadesh list Wiktionary has a word list at Appendix:Kanoê word list Macro-Paesan languages References Kanoé at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Laércio Nora Bacelar. "Povo". Povos Indígenas No Brasil. Instituto Socioambiental. Campbell, Lyle (2012). "Classification of the indigenous languages of South America". In Grondona, Verónica; Campbell, Lyle (eds.). The Indigenous Languages of South America. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 2. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 59–166. ISBN 978-3-11-025513-3. Van der Voort, Hein. 2005. Kwaza in a comparative perspective. International Journal of American Linguistics 71: 365–412. Price, David P. 1978. The Nambiquara linguistic family. Anthropological Linguistics 20 (1): 14–37. Kaufman, Terrence. 1994. The native languages of South America. In: Christopher Moseley and R. E. Asher (eds.), Atlas of the World’s Languages, 59–93. London: Routledge. Kaufman, Terrence. 2007. South America. In: R. E. Asher and Christopher Moseley (eds.), Atlas of the World’s Languages (2nd edition), 59–94. London: Routledge. Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho de Valhery (2016). Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas (Ph.D. dissertation) (2 ed.). Brasília: University of Brasília. Epps, Patience; Michael, Lev, eds. (2023). Amazonian Languages: Language Isolates. Volume II: Kanoé to Yurakaré. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-043273-2. "Kanoê". Projeto de Documentação de Línguas Indígenas. Museu do Indio. Stanislav, Zach (1943). Vocabulário das tribos Massacá, Salamãi, Coiá e Canoê (in Portuguese). Rio de Janeiro.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) Bacelar, Laércio (1992). Fonologia preliminar da língua Kanoê (in Portuguese). Brasília: Universidade de Brasília. Bacelar, Laércio (1994). "Fonologia segmental da língua Kanoê: uma análise preliminar". Signótica: Revista do Mestrado em Letras e Linguística (in Portuguese). Goiânia: UFGO (6): 59–72. Bacelar, Laércio; Pereira, Cleiton (1996). "Aspectos Morfossintáticos da Língua Kanoê". Signótica: Revista do Mestrado em Letras e Linguística (in Portuguese). Goiânia: UFGO (8): 45–55. Bacelar, Laércio; Silva Júnior, Augusto (1998). "A negação e a litotes na língua Kanoê". Signótica: Revista do Mestrado em Letras e Linguística (in Portuguese). Goiânia: UFGO (9). Bacelar, Laércio Nora (2004). Gramática da língua Kanoê (PDF) (in Portuguese). Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen. hdl:2066/19429. ISBN 9789090179582. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-07-28. Retrieved 2011-04-19. CLV:verbal classifier