Trumai language

Trumai is an endangered language isolate of Brazil. Most Trumai are fluent in languages of wider communication, and children are not learning it well.

Background

Trumai is a language spoken by the indigenous community of the same name located in the Xingu reserve along the Upper Xingu River in central Brazil. Murphy and Quain^[3] reported that there were only 25 people remaining in the Trumai community. Fortunately, this has since increased to 94 as of 1997, of which 51 people spoke the Trumai language.^[4] In the International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Grimes observes that there are 78 speakers as of 2003.^[5] Due to the popularity of speaking Portuguese among the local population,^[5] Trumai is considered an extremely endangered language^[6] because the children are not learning to speak it as a first language.^[7]

The Trumai people first entered the Upper Xingu region sometime in the early 19th century after being driven away from southeastern Brazil by the Xavante people.^[8] The first contact the Trumai had with a white person was in 1884 when Karl von den Steinen explored the Upper Xingu region.^[3][6] He observed the differences between Trumai culture and other Xingu cultures due to the Trumai’s relocation.^[6] In the fifty years or so that followed Von den Steinem’s first visit to the Trumai, there is little documentation of the community because researchers who visited the Xingu region preferred visiting and studying other indigenous cultures instead.^[3]

In the time between the Trumai’s first arrival in the upper Xingu and Von den Steinen’s first contact with them, they were continuously being attacked by the native communities in the region, including the Suyá and Ikpeng.^[8] Following a period of contacts from researchers, including Buell Quain in 1938,^[3] the Trumai moved to a new territory again, this time because of a flu and measles epidemic.^[8] After recovering from this, the subsequent population increase led to the emergence of more Trumai villages in the Upper Xingu region, while their former territories have since become occupied by other communities.^[8]

Despite being surrounded by a variety of different langauges that belong to the four major stocks of Brazilian indigenous languages (Tupi, Arawak, Cariban, and Ge), Trumai is an isolated language.^[4] There is speculation that Trumai belongs to the Equatorial language stock, in which case it is still very far removed from other languages and families belonging here.^[4][5]

Initial research done on the Trumai was included in an overall study of the cultures of the Xingu region, which was performed through surveys focussing on “material culture”.^[3] Quain was the first researcher to focus on the Trumai culture specifically, however, this was an anthropological study, not linguistic.^[3] In the preface to her thesis “A Reference Grammar of Trumaí”,^[4] Guirardello states that Monod-Becquelin was the first person to conduct descriptive studies on the Trumai language, in which she focused on aspects of the language such as ergativity^[9] and phonological transcriptions.^[10] Monod-Becquelin’s early work was followed by Greenberg’s research, which includes his aforementioned proposal that Trumai, instead of being a completely isolated language, belongs to the Equatorial stock.^[4][5]

Guirardello’s “A Reference Grammar of Trumai” is the first proper description of Trumai grammar,^[4] which Guirardello composed with the intention of it becoming an aid for future research papers on the language.^[4] Since then, research on the Trumai language has increased, leading to studies of various aspects of the language. Monod-Becquelin has continued her research by investigating the use of transitive verbs in Trumai.^[11] Guirardello’s work has also included studies into Trumai’s ergativity, focussing on the ergative-absolutive patterns in its morphology and the complexity of its syntax due to the nominative-accusative patterns also present.^[12]

Trumai was one of the 24 indigenous languages studied in South America as part of a series of documentation projects conducted by DoBeS (Documenting Endangered Lanugages).^[13] DoBeS is one of the many language documentation organizations operating in Brazil, and is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.^[13]

The Trumai culture has also been the topic of anthropological studies. The first was done by Buell Quain, who spent four months with the Trumai and gathered information on many aspects of the culture and community.^[3] More recently, De Vienne has conducted ethnographic studies on Trumai focussing on language and communication in the community, such as joking^[14] and ritual singing traditions.^[15]

Grammar

Phonology

This inventory is atypical of Amazonian languages (Trumai is a recent immigrant to the Xingu basin) in its ejective consonants, the lateral fricative /ɬ/, and the alveolar–dental distinction. Guirardello, who specializes on Trumai, has presented varied inventories of these phonemes: Guirardello (1999a)^[4] lists /t̪ t̪' ts ts' s/ as dental, and /t t' d n l ɬ ɾ/ as alveolar; whereas Guirardello (1999b) lists only /t/ and /t'/ as alveolar.^[16] Younger speakers do not make the ejective distinction.

The vocalic inventory is /i, e, a, o, u/ and h. Syllable structure is maximally CVC, and stress always falls on the final syllable of a word.

Morphology

The morphological aspects of Trumai as covered in Guirardello’s grammar of the language include the parts of speech: nouns, verbs, and auxiliaries.  Under nouns, she investigates the effect of adjectives, plurality in the language, and count versus mass nouns, among others. Under verbs, she focuses on causality, negation, intensity, and imperativity in verb particles. And under auxiliaries, she discusses body posture, mood and aspect, and directional auxiliaries.  Chapter 5 explores further analyses of each of these aspects of the parts of speech in terms of “Simple Declarative Clauses”^[4].

Pronouns in Trumai are distinguished by person, gender, number, and listener inclusion/exclusion in the first-person plural pronoun.  Like in English, gender is only seen in the third-person singular pronoun, while number is categorized as singular, dual, and plural (whereas English only has singular and plural).  They are also affected by the type of Noun Phrase (henceforth “NP”) they appear in (absolutive, ergative, or dative), which are distinguished by suffix insertion.  The following are tables of the Trumai personal pronouns with examples included for the absolutive case:^[4]

Absolutive

ha hu’tsa chï(_in)       [huksitukuk yi]-ki       [yayanke tam]

1   see     Foc/Tens     capivara      YI-Dat    deer        Com

“I saw a capivara and a deer.”^[4]

Ergative

[[Karu], [Kumaru], [Atawaka] hai-ts  amidoxos ke.

Karu     Kumaru    Atawaka   1-Erg  call         KE

‘I called Karu, Kumaru, and Atawaka.’^[4]

Dative

kiki-k         atlat-ø       kï̡tï    ha wan-ki.

man-Erg    pan-Abs   give   1-Dat

‘The man gave it to us.’^[4]

1st-person/exclusive pronouns are formed in ha, inclusive with ka, 2nd person with hi, and 3rd with in. Dual number is indicated by the suffix -a, and plural by -wan. Masculine and feminine are distinguished in the 3rd person.

Alienable possession is indicated by the suffix -kte or -kate on the possessor (Kumaru-kte tahu "Kumaru's spoon"), and inalienable possession by juxtaposition (dinoxo kuʃ "the girl's head", ha kuʃ "my head").

Suffixes are used to mark ergative (-ts for 1sg, otherwise -ek/-ak), dative, locative, allative, comitative, and instrumental case.

Syntax

Trumai is an ergative–absolutive language. Dative case is used for verbs such as 'eat', 'see', and 'talk with'. There are two verbs 'kill', one, -fa, which takes a dative, and one, disi, which takes the ergative. Constituent order is basically ergative-absolutive-verb-dative (SV, SVB, AOV, AOVB). Ergative and dative arguments, which are marked by postpositions, may occur on the other side of the verb, but for an absolutive to do this, it needs to be marked with ke.

Quantifiers and possessors occur before the noun, adjectives after.

Causatives are doubly marked for ergative case:

Alaweru-k	hai-ts	axos	disi	ka
(name)-ERG	I-ERG	child	hit	CAUS

"Alaweru made me hit the child."

References