Cayubaba language

Current situation

As shown by Crevels and Muysken (2012), the territory of Cayubaba forms part of a region historically known as Mojos (or Moxos), that covers approximately 200,000 square kilometers of what is currently the Department of Beni. Above all, the Cayubaba focus on traditional farming, growing rice, yucca, corn, bananas, sugar cane, beans, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, etc. They also raised livestock, although on a small scale. The Cayubaba community meets at the Subcentral Indígena Cayubaba, which is affiliated to the Indigenous Peoples Center of Beni (CPIB) and is, therefore, a member of the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Eastern Bolivia (CIDOB). Only 6 speakers were reported in 1975.

As of 2005, Mily Crevels reported that only two elderly speakers remain in the village of Exaltación, located on the left bank of the Mamoré River. An additional elderly speaker was also found in the city of Trinidad.

According to the 2012 Bolivian census, there were 2,203 of Cayubaba, of whom 1,246 learned speak Cayubaba language in their childhood and for only 12 Cayubaba was their main language.

Consonants

Cayubaba presents the following system of consonantal phonemes based on Key (1961, 1962, 1967).

/r/ has allophones that include [ɾ~ l~ d̥].

Vowels

The system of vowel phonemes is taken from Crevels and Muysken (2012, 2023) and based on Key (1961).

Word classes

Regarding the vocabulary and word classes in Cayubaba, the following can be pointed out (Crevels and Muysken, 2012):

In Cayubaba, there are five distinct word classes: verbs (for example boro 'give', tavu 'swim'), nouns (for example veje-veje 'wind', ñoko 'monkey'), pronouns (for example ãre-ai '1SG', ãre-a '2SG'), modifiers and particles, for example kóra 'perhaps', ñõhõ (now).

Morphology

Regarding the nominal morphology, Cayuvava shows a process of full reduplication, for example  wïrï-wïrï 'iguana', and partial, for example uku-ku 'pig'. In addition, there are also six complex and productive processes of nominal composition:

The plural nominal is expressed through the proclitic me = as observed in (Figure 1). In nominal sentences, the proclitic me, is appended to the first element of the sentence, as seen in (Figure 2).

• The personal pronouns in Cayubaba function as independent elements, but they actually are derived from verb forms. The basic pronouns, which are presented in Table 3, are derived from the existential verb ãre 'there are', 'exist'. In this verb form, the direct object marker is suffixed. In the case of plural pronouns, you can put the personal markers before the suffix -hi ‘present active state'. These pronouns may be considered, then, like presentative pronouns in the sense of 'I'm the one who...'.

• As for the verbal morphology, there are processes of reduplication and affixation, as well as a set of proclitic and enclitic elements. There are certain types of reduplication, for example [root + root] reduplication in ròmò-ròmò 'kneel down' to express an ongoing action. As for the process of affixation, the verb can be modified by a series of prefixes and suffixes that indicate the subject, object, time, appearance, mode, etc., for example, the first-position prefixes that mark time and appearance, such as the mara-'hypothetical future' in (3) and mera- 'simple future' in (4).

• The verbal complex can also be modified by a series of proclitic and enclitic elements. Within the proclitic elements, there are modal/evidential proclitics, chui='certainty', manoro= 'almost' (surely), to have the intention. Within the enclitic elements, there are locative enclitics, e.g. "=jahi" 'below', "=puti"'outside', the temporal or aspectual enclitics, e.g. "koidi" 'sometimes', "=ñoho" 'now', and the relational enclitics, e.g. "=dyë" 'together', = ma 'with respect to a woman'.

Syntax

With regard to the syntax of Cayubaba, the following is seen (Crevels and Muysken, 2012):

• Cayubaba does not present a fixed constituent order. The only mandatory element in the clause is that the predicate usually precedes the subject and objects, as is observed in (5). If the subject is a free personal pronoun, then it always precedes the predicate, as observed in (6).

• With respect to the nominal phrase, the modifier precedes the nucleus, as shown in (7). However, the possessive element follows that which is possessed, as is observed in (8).

• In Cayubaba, processes of incorporation are observed, as in (9), which consist of the incorporation of the direct object in the verb, which is in the same accent group.

• Cayubaba also presents different subordination processes. The proclitic ki = in its subordinate function, for example, is used to indicate add-ons, as in (10), and it can also complete an adverbial subordinate, as in (11). It also distinguishes conjunctions that mark subordinate clauses and appear at the beginning of the sentence, for example, "=chu" 'because' in (12).