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Paumarí language
Paumarí (also Paumari, Purupuru, Kurukuru, Pamari, Purupurú, Pammari, Curucuru, Palmari) is an Arauan language spoken in Brazil by about 300 older adults out of an ethnic population of 900. It is spoken by the Paumari Indians, who call their language "Pamoari".
The word Pamoari has several different meanings in the Paumarí language: 'man', 'people', 'human being', and 'client'. These multiple meanings stem from their different relationships with outsiders; presumably it means 'human being' when they refer to themselves to someone of ostensibly equal status, and 'client' when referring to their people among river traders and Portuguese speakers.
Speakers of Arawan languages, particularly Paumarí (who have had the most contact with non-natives) are beginning to speak Portuguese. The result, for many of the speakers in Paumarí, is a hybrid of Portuguese and Paumarí, incorporating vocabulary from both languages while retaining the syntax of neither (Chapman, a researcher from the Summer Institute of Linguistics, claims that, at the time of her arrival in 1964, all Paumarí spoke a mixture of Paumarí and Portuguese). Out of the Paumarí group that inhabits the Tapauá River, the youth, which makes up nearly a majority of the population, spoke only Portuguese in 1964. This 'linguistic Creole' tendency in the Paumarí language highlights exactly why languages such as Paumarí are endangered.
Paumarí has a consonant inventory that is similar in size to most languages of the Amazon Basin, but is areally unusual for featuring bilabial and coronal implosives, which have been lost from other Arauan languages but are reconstructed clearly for the protolanguage of the family. It is one of very few languages in the New World to contrast implosives with other voiced stop consonants: similar contrasts are known only for a few other Amazonian languages. However, it has a very simple vowel system with only three contrastive vowels, the back one of which can range from [o] to [u].
Paumarí has a (C)V syllable structure: a syllable can only contain one vowel, which may or may not be preceded by a consonant. This is consistent among all Arawan languages (Dixon (1999), 295). Often two vowels will occur in a sequence, CVV, however, the length of the resulting syllable[clarification needed] will often make a phonetic difference between the two vowels, and the syllable’s duration will correspond to the amount of vowels, reflecting a moraic structure also common in Japanese. Often in the Paumarí language, when an identical vowel occurs word-final and then word-initial in two sequential words, one of the two vowels will be dropped within the phrase.
Dan Everett of the University of North Dakota has extensively studied the accent/stress system of the Paumarí and has claimed that the Paumarí’s accent system violates some of the most basic theories put forward by linguists with regards to stress systems. Paumarí has iambic feet, which means the accent tends towards the right, or latter, portion of the word or syllable set, and they are not weight-sensitive. Everett theorizes that stress placement and syllables in the Paumarí language are more exclusive from one another than many modern theories believe. Two types of accents are distinguished in Paumarí, primary stress and secondary stress. Primary stress is characterized by a sharp increase in intensity (volume) and by somewhat higher pitch, although the latter is difficult for non-speakers to distinguish and was found by digital analysis of sound wave of native speakers. Secondary stress in Paumarí is characterized by a slight increase in intensity and often an increase in syllable duration. The final syllable of a word always has one of the two of these and therefore is always somewhat stressed. The stress system starts at the final syllable and works its way to the left, or the beginning of the word, skipping every other syllable. In disyllabic words, the primary stress is placed on the final syllable. In polysyllabic words, the primary stress is assigned to the antepenult (third from last) syllable, and the last syllable is assigned secondary stress. If the polysyllabic word is five syllables or more, every odd syllable (leftward) from the antepenult syllable is also assigned secondary stress. Therefore, regardless of how many syllables a word has, the primary stress is always on the last or antepenult syllable. The beginning syllable for a word will only have primary stress if it is a three-syllable word, and will have secondary stress only if it contains an odd number (5, 7, 9, etc.) of syllables.
It is a largely head-marking language with unmarked SVO word order and an ergative alignment for marking of nouns combined with accusative marking of pronouns.
Paumarí has only two open word classes – nouns and verbs. However, it also has numerous closed classes including fourteen adjectives, adpositions, interjections, conjunctions and demonstratives. Paumarí nouns are elaborately divided into over one hundred possessed nouns and a larger number of free nouns. Furthermore, each free noun has grammatical gender - being either masculine or feminine, with feminine being the unmarked gender and indicated by the suffix -ni.
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Paumarí language
Paumarí (also Paumari, Purupuru, Kurukuru, Pamari, Purupurú, Pammari, Curucuru, Palmari) is an Arauan language spoken in Brazil by about 300 older adults out of an ethnic population of 900. It is spoken by the Paumari Indians, who call their language "Pamoari".
The word Pamoari has several different meanings in the Paumarí language: 'man', 'people', 'human being', and 'client'. These multiple meanings stem from their different relationships with outsiders; presumably it means 'human being' when they refer to themselves to someone of ostensibly equal status, and 'client' when referring to their people among river traders and Portuguese speakers.
Speakers of Arawan languages, particularly Paumarí (who have had the most contact with non-natives) are beginning to speak Portuguese. The result, for many of the speakers in Paumarí, is a hybrid of Portuguese and Paumarí, incorporating vocabulary from both languages while retaining the syntax of neither (Chapman, a researcher from the Summer Institute of Linguistics, claims that, at the time of her arrival in 1964, all Paumarí spoke a mixture of Paumarí and Portuguese). Out of the Paumarí group that inhabits the Tapauá River, the youth, which makes up nearly a majority of the population, spoke only Portuguese in 1964. This 'linguistic Creole' tendency in the Paumarí language highlights exactly why languages such as Paumarí are endangered.
Paumarí has a consonant inventory that is similar in size to most languages of the Amazon Basin, but is areally unusual for featuring bilabial and coronal implosives, which have been lost from other Arauan languages but are reconstructed clearly for the protolanguage of the family. It is one of very few languages in the New World to contrast implosives with other voiced stop consonants: similar contrasts are known only for a few other Amazonian languages. However, it has a very simple vowel system with only three contrastive vowels, the back one of which can range from [o] to [u].
Paumarí has a (C)V syllable structure: a syllable can only contain one vowel, which may or may not be preceded by a consonant. This is consistent among all Arawan languages (Dixon (1999), 295). Often two vowels will occur in a sequence, CVV, however, the length of the resulting syllable[clarification needed] will often make a phonetic difference between the two vowels, and the syllable’s duration will correspond to the amount of vowels, reflecting a moraic structure also common in Japanese. Often in the Paumarí language, when an identical vowel occurs word-final and then word-initial in two sequential words, one of the two vowels will be dropped within the phrase.
Dan Everett of the University of North Dakota has extensively studied the accent/stress system of the Paumarí and has claimed that the Paumarí’s accent system violates some of the most basic theories put forward by linguists with regards to stress systems. Paumarí has iambic feet, which means the accent tends towards the right, or latter, portion of the word or syllable set, and they are not weight-sensitive. Everett theorizes that stress placement and syllables in the Paumarí language are more exclusive from one another than many modern theories believe. Two types of accents are distinguished in Paumarí, primary stress and secondary stress. Primary stress is characterized by a sharp increase in intensity (volume) and by somewhat higher pitch, although the latter is difficult for non-speakers to distinguish and was found by digital analysis of sound wave of native speakers. Secondary stress in Paumarí is characterized by a slight increase in intensity and often an increase in syllable duration. The final syllable of a word always has one of the two of these and therefore is always somewhat stressed. The stress system starts at the final syllable and works its way to the left, or the beginning of the word, skipping every other syllable. In disyllabic words, the primary stress is placed on the final syllable. In polysyllabic words, the primary stress is assigned to the antepenult (third from last) syllable, and the last syllable is assigned secondary stress. If the polysyllabic word is five syllables or more, every odd syllable (leftward) from the antepenult syllable is also assigned secondary stress. Therefore, regardless of how many syllables a word has, the primary stress is always on the last or antepenult syllable. The beginning syllable for a word will only have primary stress if it is a three-syllable word, and will have secondary stress only if it contains an odd number (5, 7, 9, etc.) of syllables.
It is a largely head-marking language with unmarked SVO word order and an ergative alignment for marking of nouns combined with accusative marking of pronouns.
Paumarí has only two open word classes – nouns and verbs. However, it also has numerous closed classes including fourteen adjectives, adpositions, interjections, conjunctions and demonstratives. Paumarí nouns are elaborately divided into over one hundred possessed nouns and a larger number of free nouns. Furthermore, each free noun has grammatical gender - being either masculine or feminine, with feminine being the unmarked gender and indicated by the suffix -ni.