T RACES OF LINGUISTIC CONTACT AS A PEEPHOLE INTO THE PAST
What can loanwords in Tikuna tell us about the history of the Tikunas?
Denis Bertet — DDL, Lyon — March 29, 2021 Atelier DiLiS
My Tikuna collaborators in San Martín de Amacayacu (Colombia)
Amalia Skilton and Zachary O’Hagan for collaboration and discussion on today’s topic (mostly in 2018)
Thanks to…
What can the many loanwords in the Tikuna language (western Amazonia, isolate) tell us about the history of Tikuna speakers themselves?
1. How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
2. How to determine their immediate source language?
3. What are the immediate source languages I have (or have not) detected? What words were borrowed from which?
4. What stories of human contact do these traces of linguistic contact (or lack thereof) suggest?
How do these stories built on linguistic evidence fit together with our (non-linguistic) historical knowledge?
Research questions & outline
What is Tikuna?
About 60.000 speakers Peru, Colombia, Brazil
along Amazon & Putumayo rivers Language isolate (?)
Tones
(x́=High, x̄=Mid, x̀=Low, among others)
Research questions & outline
1. How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
At first… chance + personal knowledge of source languages, and literature (e.g. Montes 2002:68- 70)
BUT soon, distinctive phonological properties appear to recur in randomly encountered loans
• specific tone sequences (see also Skilton 2017:20-21)
• often number of syllables >2
⇒ these phonological properties prove to constitute highly reliable criteria for detecting loans
How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
Specific tone sequences
The tone sequences typical of loans result from stress-to-tones mapping (note: the source languages I have detected are all “stress-”, not “tone-languages”)
(see Kang 2010:2296-2302 for similar cases)
Major types Type 1a Type 2 Residual types
Type 1b Type 3
+ a few nonce tone sequences
How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
Specific tone sequences
Type 1a: /(σ σ σ)ˈσ σ/ ⇒ /(σ̄ σ̄ σ̄) σ̄ σ̀/ (mid-to-low)
pōkù ‘fish sp.’ < Om. [ˈpaku] or Sp. [ˈpaku~ˈpako]
yāwǖrǜ ‘bird sp.’ < Om. *[jaˈwɨɾu]
ōkāyǖwà ‘tree sp.’ < Om. [akaˈjɨwa]
mōtārākārì ‘tuber sp.’ < LGA [maᵑgaɾaˈtaja]
Widely attested but no longer productive
How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
Specific tone sequences
Type 2: /(σ σ)ˈσ σ (σ)/ ⇒ /(σ̄ σ̄) σ́ σ̀ (σ̀)/ (mid-to-high-to-low) pétà ‘party’ < Pt. [ˈfɛːstɐ]
tāchíwà ‘ant’ < LGA [taˈʃiwa]
yōwārúnà ‘black jaguar’ < LGA [jawaˈɾuna]
āchúkàrà ‘sugar’ < Pt.[aˈsuːkaɾ] (or Sp. [aˈsukaɾ])
How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
Specific tone sequences
Type 2 (and 1a?): /(σ σ σ)ˈσ/ ⇒ /(σ̄ σ̄ σ̄) σ́/ (mid-to-high)
kāpé ‘coffee’ < Pt. [kaˈfɛ] (or Sp. [kaˈfe̞]) pūrākǘ ‘work’ < LGA [puɾaˈkɨ]
ārāwīrí ‘fish sp.’ < LGA [aɾawiˈɾi]
Note: */(σ σ σ)ˈσ/ ⇒ /(σ̄ σ̄ σ̄) σ̄/, which could have been the output expected for Type 1a with word-final stress in the source form, is unattested ⇒ mid-to-high might represent subtypes of both Type 2 and Type 1a
How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
Specific tone sequences
Type 2 is widely attested and still productive in borrowing and code-mixing:
sérò ‘be absent’ < Sp. [ˈse̞ɾo̞] ‘zero’ (in teenagers’ speech)
(1) g̃èʼnèrǘʼü̋nè yá comunidadwa̋ tāyà-presentandogü̋ʼü̃́ ì tôʼrǖ pūrākǘ
< Sp. [ko̞muniˈð̞ag˺] [pɾe̞se̞nˈtando̞]
kōmūnīdág prēsēntándò
‘we go and present our work in whatever community’ [JSG A206]
How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
Specific tone sequences
Type 1b: /(σ)ˈσ σ/ ⇒ /(σ̄ʔ)σ̄ʔσ̀/ (mid-to-low + /ʔ/) kǖʼchì ‘knife’ < Om. [ˈkɨʃi]
pōʼpōyù ‘papaya’ < Sp. [paˈpaja] ‘papaya’ or [paˈpajo̞] ‘papaya tree’
kūʼmākà ‘plant sp.’ < Om. *[kuˈmaka] ‘dye from this plant’
or Sp. [kuˈmaka]~[ko̞ˈmaka]
Attested in a handful of words (only the 3 above with certainty)
How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
Specific tone sequences
Type 3: /σˈσ σ/, /σ σˈσ σ/, etc. ⇒ /σ̄ σ̋/ (truncated mid-to-super-high) kōri̋ ‘non-indigen.’ < LGA [kaˈɾiwa]
wǖra̋ ‘bow’ < LGA [wɨɾaˈpaɾa]
tūbe̋ ‘tuberculosis’ < Pt. [tubeɾkuˈɫɔːzi] or Sp. [tuβ̞e̞ɾkuˈlo̞sis] (Cushillococha variety)
Attested in ≈12 words
How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
Specific tone sequences Nonce tonal patterns:
kūrūrű ‘toad’ < LGA [kuɾuˈɾu]
pâi ‘(rel.) father’ < LGA [paj] (?) (or Portuguese [paj] ‘father’?)
yōra̋ ‘master’ < Om. or LGA [ˈjaɾa] (not Type 3, but integrated into set of social function words with final super-high tone?)
How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
Specific tone sequences
Native words can feature these tonal patterns:
tōmà ‘we (excl.)’
ã̄ʼétǜ ‘to have eyes’
tāgù/tāwa̋ ‘downriver’
BUT Tikuna has an inventory of 10 tonemes in stressed (≈ root-initial) syllables + 6 tonemes in unstressed syllables
+ every (underlying) syllable has an associated toneme
+ there are virtually no restrictions in sequences of tonemes
⇒ native words may feature plenty of other tonal patterns and statistically rarely display the very specific ones typical of loans
How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
Specific tone sequences
These tone sequences allow to collect lists of potential loans (with no identified source yet):
tūrì ‘cell for ritual imprisonment’
pōrì ‘tobacco’
pōʼi̋ ‘plantain’
ȭmāchà ‘dolphin sp.’
Kōwēnà ‘Caballo cocha (a lake and town name)’
g̃ūtūmāchà ‘spinning top’
būētāré ‘type of basket (?)’
…
How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
Specific tone sequences
These tone sequences allow to reinforce otherwise uncertain etymologies:
ōta̋ ‘chicken’
ultimately < Quechuan /atawaʎpa/? (Nordenskiöld 1922:17, Nimuendajú 1952:23, Adelaar &
Muysken 2004:500-501, Cerrón-Palomino 2017)
Type 3 (truncated mid-to-super-high) ⇒ indeed, the source form must have started with /ata-/ and had more than 2 syllables (probably Om. [ataˈwaɾi])
How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
Specific tone sequences
These tone sequences allow to reinforce otherwise uncertain etymologies:
kōtù ‘palm sp.’
< Yumana-Passé *[katʰo]?
(reconstructible from Yukunakáruand Resígarokaádófollowing Ramirez’ [2019:452-517]
rules of phonological correspondences between Japurá-Colômbia Arawakan languages)
A lot more likely given this form’s Type 1 tone sequence
How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
Specific tone sequences ALTHOUGH CAUTION!
At least a few loans are known not to display any of these tone sequences
⇒ focusing on the tone sequences typical for loans should not prevent from detecting loans with other, (so far) unexpected tone sequences
How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
Number of syllables
All well-established loans I have found so far are independent nouns or verbs
Native items in these categories are typically either disyllabic (independent nouns) or monosyllabic (verbs)
Loans, by contrast, typically display from 2 to 5 syllables
⇒ another criterion to combine with that of tone sequences
How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
Forms collected by applying these criteria
In a survey of the Tikuna varieties of both San Martín de Amacayacu (Colombia; own fieldwork data) and Cushillococha (Peru; based on Anderson & Anderson 2016 mostly):
≈300 forms collected in total
of which ≈200 have been confirmed to be loans so far
(i.e. I have found a phonologically and semantically adequate non-native source for them)
How to detect loanwords in Tikuna?
2. How to determine the source languages of loans?
IMPORTANT NOTE: my focus is on immediate source (or donor) languages, as I am interested in the history of contacts (i.e. not etymology proper)
e.g. pōpērà ‘paper, book’
ETYMOLOGY ”ultimately” from Portuguese [paˈpɛɫ] ‘paper’
(in fact the story could go on, back to Ancient Greek πάπυροςand further…)
CONTACT BUT the immediate source language is more likely LGA [paˈpeɾa]
⇒ implies contacts between LGA speakers and Tikuna speakers
How to determine the source languages of loans?
Lexicographical sources
As many as possible, a number of them older, non-linguistically-informed records Languages known to have been spoken in the vicinity of Tikuna-speaking people:
Tupí-Guaranían: †Old and Modern Omagua, †Upper Amazon LGA, Modern Cocama Arawakan:†Yumana, †Passé, †Wainumá, †Mariaté, †Kauixana, †Marawá, †Waraiku Peba-Yaguan:Yagua, †Peba
Quechuan: unidentified variety Romance: Portuguese, Spanish Unclassified: (†?)Yurí
How to determine the source languages of loans?
Lexicographical sources
But data on languages spoken further away may also prove informative, especially as far as forms from formerly widely-spoken lingua francas are concerned:
e.g. data from Upper Rio Negro Nheengatu (Tupí-Guaranían), Yukuna (Arawakan), Tukano (Tukanoan), Sateré-Mawé (Tupian), etc., are often indirectly informative about LGA
How to determine the source languages of loans?
Phonological criterion first
I essentially determine source languages based on phonological grounds, avoiding to take decisions based on historical knowledge
This way, I am able at a later stage to assess historical knowledge against results reached independently from it
How to determine the source languages of loans?
Phonological criterion first
e.g. ūì ‘cassava flour’
< Om. [ˈuj] OR < LGA [u.ˈ(ʔ)i] ?
✓ ✗
better candidate on phonological grounds
How to determine the source languages of loans?
Phonological criterion first e.g. pūtǖrà ‘flower’
< Om. [puˈtɨɾa] OR < LGA [puˈtɨɾa] ?
⇒ undecidable, could be either one on phonological grounds
How to determine the source languages of loans?
Historical sources
First-hand reports (by colonists, explorers, scientists, etc.), anthropological, archeological, historical literature, etc.
Historical context is of course useful, but I use it more as a guide for where to look, rather than for making decisions as to source language
I additionally use the known historical context, once I have determined the source language, to roughly date groups of borrowings relative to one another
How to determine the source languages of loans?
How to determine the source languages of loans?
??? ? ? ?
Historical sources
Note that I additionally use the known historical context, once I have determined source languages, to roughly date groups of borrowings relative to one another
In particular:
–loans from Old Omagua are doubtlessly older than loans from LGA, Sp. or Pt.
–interestingly, most loans from Om. are of Type 1a (never of Type 2)
–on the other hand, loans from LGA, Sp. or Pt. are of Types 1a OR 2; some of the Type 2 ones are clearly of comparatively recent origin (wāpúrù ‘larger boat’ < Pt. [vaˈpoːɾ], mūtúrù
< Pt. [moˈtoːɾ] or Sp. [mo̞ˈto̞ɾ]), and Type 2 is still productive to this day
⇒ the distribution of Type 1a (older, obsolete) and Type 2 (more recent, still productive) is chronological
How to determine the source languages of loans?
3. What source languages have I detected?
Old Omagua
≈35 unambiguous items
Mostly fish, plants, birds, reptiles, insects
But also: ‘floor’, ‘mirror’, ‘knife’, ‘axe’, ‘needle’, ‘cassava flour’, ‘drum’, ‘mosquito net’,
‘fishing net’, ‘rapids’, ‘sun’ (in a song)
⇒ important to distinguish Om. from LGA
(which is not done in previous works – e.g. Montes 2002:68-70 – except by Skilton)
What source languages have I detected?
LGA
≈65 unambiguous items
Proportionally fewer fish, plants, birds, reptiles, insects
(would be worth checking if their habitat is informative, as suggested in Montes 2002:68, footnote 10)
“Brazilian Amazonian” culture:
Food: ‘salt’, ‘salted fish’, ‘grits’, ‘banana-based alcoholic drink’, ‘alcoholic drink from cassava leaves’, ‘cassava bread’, ‘type of sugar’
Objects: ‘bow’, ‘rifle’, ‘plank’, ‘ring’, ‘earring’, ‘scissors’, ‘basket type’
Society and beliefs: ‘work’, ‘labor party’, ‘carpenter’, ‘sugar mill’, ‘White’, ‘soldier’
What source languages have I detected?
Portuguese
>30 unambiguous items Few animal and plant names
Other words include: ‘coffin’, ‘tambourine’, ‘gimlet’, ‘pocketknife’, ‘key’, ‘money’, ‘perfume’,
‘soap’, ‘soccer shoes’, ‘belt’, ‘raft’, ‘larger boat’, ‘measles’
What source languages have I detected?
Spanish
Only 3 items are clearly borrowings (vs cases of code-mixing; Matras 2009:110-114)and clearly from Spanish (vs Pt. or in a few cases Om.):
‘table’, ‘papaya’, ‘be absent’
This should not be taken to mean that such borrowings are virtually absent, but just virtually impossible to assess quantitatively
What source languages have I detected?
The exact source of many items cannot be decided on phonological grounds, especially in cases involving:
Omagua or LGA (lexifier of Omagua, Old Tupi, is parent language of LGA) Portuguese or Spanish (closely related)
LGA or Portuguese (Brazilian Pt. has borrowed a lot from Old Tupi and LGA)
Omagua or Spanish (local Spanish seems to have borrowed species names from Omagua or Cocama)
What source languages have I detected?
Other sources
Only 2 loans from Arawakan languages:
ōpǖyà ‘collared peccary’ < Yumana [apɨja] (Ramirez 2019:503) (marginal synonym
for native wordngùü̃̀)
kōtù ‘palm sp.’ < Yumana-Passé *[katʰo]?
At odds with vague claims made here and there in literature on Tikuna as to Arawakan influence (e.g. Nimuendajú 1952:156, Cogua 2009:4)
What source languages have I detected?
Other sources
Not a single unproblematic, clearly direct loan from Quechuan. The few “ultimately”
Quechuan loans also exist in (at least) Om., which could be the immediate source:
Tikuna Omagua
ōta̋ ‘chicken’ [ataˈwaɾi]
pūrūtù ‘bean’ [puˈɾutu]
chīrápà ‘rainbow’ [ʃiˈɾapa] (but problematic tone sequence)
wāwà ‘baby’ *[ˈwawa]? (cf. [wawaŋˈgɨɾa] ‘child’, with diminutive /=kɨɾa/)
pīchi̋ ‘bird sp.’ cf. Napo Lowland Quecha [ˈpiʃku] ‘bird’?
īrāwà ‘vulture’ cf. Napo Lowland Quechua [iʎaˈwaŋga]?
(Bowern et al., https://huntergatherer.la.utexas.edu)
What source languages have I detected?
4. What contact scenarios do loans suggest?
The following are preliminary interpretations only
A deeper understanding of historical sources is needed
What contact scenarios do loans suggest?
Sets of loans from LGA, Portuguese and Spanish: mostly unsurprising Fits well with known history of the region (see timeline in previous slide) An intriguing detail:
kōri̋ ‘non-indigenous person’
was borrowed from LGA, only at the end of the 18th century at the earliest, while relatively intense contacts with Europeans started a century earlier, at the end of the 17th century, with missionary presence coming from Quito (see e.g. Zárate 1998)
What contact scenarios do loans suggest?
Significant presence of loans from Old Omagua
The Tikunas are usually presented in the literature as being traditional enemies with the Omaguas (see e.g. Nimuendajú 1952:65-67).
Loans (e.g. domestic items, fish) minimally suggest regular economic exchanges (as discussed by Zárate 1998:76-78)
Possibly more intense contact yet? No loans from Tikuna in Omagua in any case
What contact scenarios do loans suggest?
Extreme rarity of loans from Arawakan
Several sources mention a strong Arawakan cultural presence in the area
in the first millenium CE and possible cultural borrowings from Arawakan-speaking groups into Tikuna culture (Goulard 2010:185-188, Eriksen 2011:52-54,222, Eriksen & Danielsen 2014)
Several Arawakan-speaking peoples (now disappareared) immediately bordered the Tikunas from at least ca. 1500 to ca. 1800 (see e.g. Hill & Santos-Granero 2002:9, Eriksen 2011:222)
Loan rarity is at odds with this historical context: could it be that loans from Arawakan display different, “unexpected” tone sequences? Or is it that the Tikunas in fact had virtually no
contact with these people?
What contact scenarios do loans suggest?
(Near-?)absence of loans from Quechuan
Unclear how strong Quechuan presence was, but it existed from at least the end of the 17th century (missionary presence from Ecuador) to the beginning of the 19th century (trade from the west; Martius 1867, vol.2:289)
Confirmed by significant presence in toponymy from Peru into first half of Colombian Amazon (rivers in -yacu, e.g. Amacayacu, lit. ‘hammock river’; lakes in -cocha, e.g. Cushillocochan, lit.
‘knife lake’)
Virtually no loans, however…
What contact scenarios do loans suggest?
Summary
Preliminary results
Loans in Tikuna are rather easily detected and display typologically interesting patterns of tone imposition, but their immediate source language may be delicate to establish with certainty due to strong bonds between the languages involved
Main immediate source languages are Old Omagua, LGA, Portuguese, and Spanish Old Omagua loans point at much more elaborate contacts with the Omaguas than just warfare
Loans from Arawakan and Quechuan are conspicuously lacking
Summary
Directions
Search further to identify source of most highly suspected loans Many more loans to collect from the literature and to classify
Better understand the historical context based on non-directly-linguistic sources
Look at relationship with Yuri (claimed to be genetically related to Tikuna; see e.g. Carvalho 2009)
Summary
• Adelaar, W. F. H. & P. C. Muysken, 2004, The Languages of the Andes, Cambridge University Press
• Anderson, D. & L. Anderson, 2016, Diccionario ticuna - castellano, ILV
• Carvalho, F. O. de, 2009, On the genetic kinship of the languages Tikúna and Yurí, Revista Brasileira de Lingüística Antropológica 1(2), 247-268
• Cerrón-Palomino, R., 2017, Etimología popular y etimología científica: el caso de atawallpa~wallpa para designar al gallo en el mundo andino y amazónico, Lingüística 33(2), 9-31
• Cogua Gómez, Á. M., 2009, Análisis de dos textos narrativos tikuna,Master’s thesis
• Eriksen, L., 2011, Nature and Culture in Prehistoric Amazonia,PhD dissertation
• Eriksen, L. & S. Danielsen, 2014, The Arawakan matrix, in L. O’Connor & P. Muysken (ed.), The Native Languages of South America: Origins, Development, Typology, 152-176
• Goulard, J.-P., 2010, El noroeste amazónico en perspectiva. Una lectura desde los siglos V-VI hasta 1767, Mundo Amazónico1, 183-213
• Hill, J. & F. Santos-Granero (ed.), 2002, Comparative Arawakan Histories: Rethinking Language Family and Culture Area in Amazonia, University of Illinois Press
References
• Kang, Y., 2010, Tutorial overview: Suprasegmental adaptation in loanwords, Lingua120, 2295-2310
• Matras, Y., 2009, Language contact, Cambridge University Press
• Montes Rodríguez, M. E. (ed.), 2002, Libro guía del maestro. Materiales de lengua y cultura ticuna, Universidad Nacional de Colombia
• Nimuendajú, C., 1952, The Tukuna, University of California Press
• Nordenskiöld, E., 1922, Deductions Suggested by the Geographical Distribution of some Post- Columbian Words Used by the Indians of South America, Elanders Boktryckeri
• Ramirez, H., 2019, Enciclopédia das línguas arawak: acrescida de seis novas línguas e dois bancos de dados
• Skilton, A., 2017, Phonology and Nominal Morphology of Cushillococha Ticuna, unpublished PhD dissertation prospectus
• Zárate Botía, C. G., 1998, Movilidad y permanencia ticuna en la frontera amazónica colonial del siglo
References
Main lexicographical sources used for identifying source languages of loans (among many others)
• O’Hagan, Z., 2011, Diccionario del idioma omagua, unpublished manuscript
• Stradelli, E., 1929, Vocabularios da lingua geral portuguez-nheêngatú e nheêngatú-portuguez,
precedidos de um esboço de Grammatica nheênga-umbuê-sáua mirî e seguidos de contos em lingua geral nheêngatú poranduua, Revista do Instituto Historico e Geographico Brasileiro 104(158), 9-768
• Vallejos Yopán, R. & R. Amías Murayari, Diccionario kukama-kukamiria * castellano, AIDESEP/ISEPL–
FORMABIAP
