Karajá language

For other uses, see Karaja (disambiguation).
Karajá
Native to Brazil
Region Araguaia River
Ethnicity 3,600 Karajá people (2007)[1]
Native speakers
 2,700 (2006)[1]
Macro-Gê

  • Ofaie

    • Karajá
Dialects
  • Javaé
  • Xambioá
Language codes
ISO 639-3 kpj
Glottolog kara1500[2]

Karajá, also known as Ynã, is spoken by the Karajá people in some thirty villages in central Brazil. Dialects are North Karaja, South Karaja, Xambioá, and Javaé. There are distinct male and female forms of speech; one of the principal differences is that men drop the sound /k/, which is pronounced by women.

Karaja is a verb-final language,[3] with simple noun and more complex verbal morphology that includes noun incorporation. Verbs inflect for direction as well as person, mood, object, and voice.

Phonology

Karajá has nine oral vowels, /i e ɛ, ɨ ə a, u o ɔ/, and two nasal vowels, /ə̃ õ/. /a/ is nasalized word initially and when preceded by /h/ or a voiced stop: /aθi/ → [ãθi] 'grass', /ɔha/ → [ɔhã] 'armadillo'; this in turn nasalizes a preceding /b/ or /d/: /bahadu/ → [mãhãdu] 'group', /dadi/ → [nãdi] 'my mother'.[4]

Front Central Back
Close i ɨ u
Mid e, ɛ ə, ə̃ o, õ
Open a ɔ

This language has vowel harmony that matches vowels' tenseness to the vowel of the following suffix.[5]

V → [+ATR] / _ (C)-V[+ATR]

There are only twelve consonants, eight of which are coronal:[6]

LabialDentalPostalveolarVelarGlottal
Stop/Affricate Voiceless tʃk
Voiced bddʒ
Implosive ɗ
Fricative θʃ h
Lateral l
Sonorant wɾ

Men's and women's speech

Some examples of the differences between men's and women's speech, especially the presence or lack of /k/ (including in borrowings from Portuguese), follow:[7]

Women Men Gloss
kɔɗuɔɗuturtle
kɔlukɔɔluɔlabret
kaɾitʃakɾeaɾiakɾeI will walk*
bɛɾakubeɾoriver
adõdaaõdathinɡ
dõbĩkudõbĩuSunday
(from Portuguese domingo)

* The /itʃa/ derives historically from *ika

The second person pronoun /kai/ is an exception to this rule, and is pronounced the same by men and women.[5]

Notes

  1. 1 2 Karajá at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Karajá". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ Rodrigues (1999), pp. 187-88
  4. ↑ Rodrigues (1999), pp. 172-73
  5. 1 2 Ribeiro, Eduardo (2012). A Grammar of Karaja. Chicago, IL: Dissertation of University of Chicago.
  6. ↑ Rodgrigues (1999), pp. 176-78
  7. ↑ Rodrigues (1999), pg. 177

References

External links

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