Tupi language

Tupi
Old Tupi, Ancient Tupi, Classical Tupi, Tupinambá
RegionCoastline of Brazil
EthnicityTupinambá, Tupiniquim
Era16th-18th centuries; developed into Nheengatu
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3tpn – inclusive code Tupinambá
Individual codes:
tpk – Tupiniquim
pog – Potiguara
tpw – Tupi (retired)
Glottologtupi1273
Linguasphere88-AAI-g
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Old Tupi, Ancient Tupi or Classical Tupi (Portuguese pronunciation: [tuˈpi]) is a classical Tupian language which was spoken by the Indigenous Tupi people of Brazil, who inhabited coastal regions in South and Southeast Brazil. In the words of Brazilian tupinologist Eduardo Navarro, "it is the classical indigenous language of Brazil, and the one which had the utmost importance to the cultural and spiritual formation of the country".[page needed]

Old Tupi belongs to the Tupi–Guarani language family, and has a written history spanning the 16th, 17th, and early 18th centuries. In the early colonial period, Tupi was used as a lingua franca throughout Brazil by Europeans and Amerindians, and had literary usage, but it was later suppressed almost to extinction. Today, its sole living descendant is the Nheengatu language.

As the most important native language of Brazil, it is the origin of most city names of indigenous origin (Pindamonhangaba, Ubatuba, Botucatu, Jacareí). It also names several plants and animals, and many proper names are Tupi names, such as Moacir, Iara, Iracema and Jandaia. It has a rich literature, which includes catechisms, poems and plays.[page needed]

The names Old Tupi or Classical Tupi are used for the language in English and by modern scholars (it is referred to as tupi antigo in Portuguese). It has previously been known, in Portuguese, as língua brasílica "Brazilian language".

History

Joseph of Anchieta (1534–1597), the first grammarian of Tupi, as envisioned by Antônio Parreiras

Old Tupi was first spoken by the Tupinambá people, who lived under cultural and social conditions very unlike those found in Europe. It is quite different from Indo-European languages in phonology, morphology, and grammar, but it was adopted by many Luso-Brazilians born in Brazil as a lingua franca.[citation needed]

It belonged to the Tupi–Guarani language family, which stood out among other South American languages for the vast territory it covered. Until the 16th century, these languages were found throughout nearly the entirety of the Brazilian coast, from Pará to Santa Catarina, and the Río de la Plata basin. Today, Tupi languages are still heard in Brazil (states of Maranhão, Pará, Amapá, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás, São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, and Espírito Santo), as well as in French Guiana, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina.

It is a common mistake to speak of the "Tupi–Guarani language": Tupi, Guarani and a number of other minor or major languages all belong to the Tupian language family, in the same sense that English, Romanian, and Sanskrit belong to the Indo-European language family. One of the main differences between the two languages was the replacement of Tupi /s/ by the glottal fricative /h/ in Guarani.

The first accounts of the Old Tupi language date back from the early 16th century, but the first written documents containing actual information about it were produced from 1575 onwards – when Jesuits André Thévet and José de Anchieta began to translate Catholic prayers and biblical stories into the language. Another foreigner, Jean de Lery, wrote the first (and possibly only) Tupi "phrasebook", in which he transcribed entire dialogues. Lery's work is the best available record of how Tupi was actually spoken.

In the first two or three centuries of Brazilian history, nearly all colonists coming to Brazil would learn the tupinambá variant of Tupi, as a means of communication with both the Indigenous people and with other early colonists who had adopted the language.

The Jesuits, however, not only learned to speak tupinambá, but also encouraged the natives to keep it. As a part of their missionary work, they translated some literature into it and also produced some original work written directly in Tupi. José de Anchieta reportedly wrote more than 4,000 lines of poetry in tupinambá (which he called lingua Brasilica) and the first Tupi grammar. Luís Figueira was another important figure of this time, who wrote the second Tupi grammar, published circa 1628. In the second half of the 18th century, the works of Anchieta and Figueira were republished and Father João Filipe Bettendorff wrote a new and more complete catechism. By that time, the language had made its way into the clergy and was the de facto national language of Brazil – though it was probably seldom written, as the Roman Catholic Church held a near monopoly of literacy.

When the Portuguese Prime Minister Marquis of Pombal expelled the Jesuits from Brazil in 1759, the language started to wane quickly, as few Brazilians were literate in it. A new rush of Portuguese immigration had been taking place since the early 18th century, due to the discovery of gold, diamonds, and gems in the interior of Brazil, and these new colonists spoke only their mother tongue. Old Tupi survived as a spoken language (used by Europeans and Indian populations alike) only in isolated inland areas, far from the major urban centres. Its use by a few non-Indian speakers in those isolated areas would last for over a century still.

Documentation

When the Portuguese first arrived on the shores of modern-day Brazil, most of the tribes they encountered spoke very closely related languages. The Portuguese (and particularly the Jesuit priests who accompanied them) set out to proselytise the natives. To do so most effectively, doing so in the natives' own languages was convenient, so the first Europeans to study Tupi were those priests.

The priests modeled their analysis of the new language after the one with which they had already experienced: Latin, which they had studied in the seminary. In fact, the first grammar of Tupi—written by the Jesuit priest José de Anchieta and published in 1595—is structured much like a contemporary Latin grammar. While this structure is not optimal, it certainly served its purpose of allowing its intended readership (Catholic priests familiar with Latin grammars) to get enough of a basic grasp of the language to be able to communicate with and evangelise the natives. Also, the grammar sometimes regularised or glossed over some regional differences in the expectation that the student, once "in the field", would learn these finer points of the particular dialect through use with his flock.

Significant works were a Jesuit catechism of 1618, with a second edition of 1686; another grammar written in 1687 by another Jesuit priest, Luís Figueira; an anonymous dictionary of 1795 (again published by the Jesuits); a dictionary published by Antônio Gonçalves Dias, a well-known 19th century Brazilian poet and scholar, in 1858; and a chrestomathy published by Dr Ernesto Ferreira França in 1859. The most recent dictionary is the Old Tupi Dictionary (2013), by the Brazilian scholar Eduardo de Almeida Navarro.

Tupinology

In Brazil, tupinology is the study of Tupi language and literature. It began in 1901, with the work of Theodoro Sampaio. An individual who dedicates themselves to the field of tupinology is a tupinologist.

Phonology

Vowels

Tupi vocalic phonemes
Front Central Back
oral nasal oral nasal oral nasal
High i ĩ ɨ ɨ̃ u ũ
Mid e ẽ o õ
Low a ã

Oral

  • /a/ is realized as [a] and [ə]. It occurs in all positions.
    • The phone [ə] occurs in unstressed word-final position and is in complementary distribution with [a], as in [jaˈwarə] ("jaguar") and [ˈtaβə] ("village").
    • It is represented in Navarro's orthography by ⟨a⟩, as in ⟨taba⟩ ("village").
  • /e, i, o/ are realized as [ɛ, i, ɔ]. They occur "probably" in all positions. Examples are [ɛˈⁿdɛ] ("you"), [iˈtaɲaˈɛ̃] ("stone bowl"), and [ɔˈpak] ("he wakes up").
    • According to Navarro, the "timbre" of ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ is "probably open", as in Portuguese pé and avó. According to Barbosa, they occupy an intermediate position between their closed and open variants. He describes their sounds as those of mesa and moça, "somewhat less closed", rather than those of vela and mola.
    • They are represented in Navarro's orthography by ⟨e, i, o⟩.
  • /ɨ/ is realized as [ɨ]. It occurs "probably" in all positions except unstressed word-final position. An example is [ɨˈtu] ("waterfall").
    • According to Navarro, [ɣ] may appear in syllable-medial position when one syllable ends in ⟨y⟩ and is followed by another beginning with a vowel, as in ⟨yara⟩ ~ ⟨ygara⟩ (realized as [ɨˈɣara], meaning "canoe"). According to Barbosa, it seems to be a vestige of the representation of ⟨y⟩ when ⟨ig⟩ or ⟨yg⟩ were written, as in "Iperoig".
    • It is represented in Navarro's orthography by ⟨y⟩, following the tradition initiated by Figueira in the 17th century, after the "indecision" of the 16th century.
  • /u/ is realized as [u]. It occurs in all positions except unstressed word-final position. An example is [taˈtu] ("armadillo").
    • It is represented in Navarro's orthography by ⟨u⟩.

Nasal

  • /ã, ẽ, ĩ, õ, ũ, ɨ̃/ are realized as [ã, ɛ̃, ĩ, ɔ̃, ũ, ɨ̃‍]. They occur in stressed syllables. Examples are [piˈã] ("a disease"), [ɛˈɛ̃] ("sweet", "salty"), [ˈtĩ‍] ("nose"), [ˈɾɔ̃] ("thus", "then"), [ˈɲũ] ("field"), and [ɨˈβɨ̃j] ("hollow inner part").
    • They are represented in Navarro's orthography by ⟨ã, ẽ, ĩ, õ, ũ, ỹ⟩. Navarro considers them allophones of the oral vowels, but Gerardi provides minimal pairs.

Consonants

Tupi consonant phonemes
Bilabial Alveolar Post-
alveolar
Palatal Velar Glottal
Stop p (pʷ) (pʲ) t k (kʷ) ʔ
Fricative β ~ b s (ʃ) (h)
Nasal m n ŋ
Flap ɾ
Approximant w j (ɰ)

Stops

  • /p/ is realized as [p] and [ᵐb], and /t/ is realized as [t] and [ⁿd]. They occur in initial and medial positions.
  • /k/ is realized as [k] and [ŋ]. It occurs in all positions.
    • Rodrigues does not consider /p, t, k/ to be realized as [ᵐb, ⁿd, ŋ]. Examples of /p, t, k/ realized as [ᵐb, ⁿd, ŋ] would be /jũ/ + /pɨterɨpe/ (realized as [‍ɲũ.ᵐbɨ.te.rɨ.ˈpe], meaning "in the middle of the field"), /emi/ + /tɨpɨrõ/ (realized as [ẽ.mĩ.ⁿdɨ.pɨ.ˈrõ], meaning "stew"), and /kujã/ + /katu/ (realized as [ku.ɲã.ŋa.ˈtu], meaning "good woman").
    • [p, t, k] are represented in Navarro's orthography by ⟨p, t, k⟩, as in ⟨potĩ⟩ ("shrimp"), ⟨taba⟩ ("village"), and ⟨paka⟩ ("paca").
  • /pʷ, pʲ, kʷ/ are realized as [pʷ, pʲ, kʷ]. They occur in syllable-initial position. Rodrigues does not list them as phonemes.
  • /ʔ/ is realized as [ʔ]. It occurs in root-initial and root-medial positions. Rodrigues makes no mention of the glottal stop, "probably" because he relied on selected sources "without taking into account" genetically related languages.
    • It is represented in Navarro's orthography by ⟨'⟩, an innovation compared to Barbosa and Edelweiss [pt], as in ⟨ka'a⟩ (realized as [kaˈʔa], meaning "forest").

Fricatives

  • /β/ ~ /b/ is realized as [β], [b], and [p̚] (or simply [p]). It occurs in word-initial, root-medial, and final positions.
    • The phones [b] and [p̚] (or simply [p]) occur in final position in free variation, as in /seruβ/ (realized as [‍ʃe.ˈrub] ~ [‍ʃe.ˈrup̚] or simply [‍ʃɛˈɾup], meaning "oh my father").
    • It is represented in Navarro's orthography by ⟨b⟩, and sometimes at the end of a word by ⟨p⟩, as in ⟨tobá⟩ (realized as [tɔˈβa], meaning "face") and ⟨xe r-up!⟩ ("my father!").
    • Cruz considers [β] to be a phone of /m/ and therefore not to have phonemic status.
  • /s/ is realized as [s] and [‍ʃ‍]. It occurs in initial and medial positions, as in [sɨˈrɨk] ("slide, leak out") and [‍jaˈsuk] ("wash").
    • The phone [‍ʃ‍] occurs when preceded by ⟨i⟩ or ⟨î⟩, as in /isɨ/ (realized as [i.ˈʃ‍ɨ], meaning "his mother"). It occurs in word-initial position in onomatopoeias, loanwords, the reduced form of /ise/ ("I"), and in suffixes that only occur followed by /i/.
    • It is represented in Navarro's orthography by ⟨s⟩ and ⟨x⟩, as in ⟨a-só⟩ ("I go"), ⟨i xy⟩ ("his mother"), and ⟨ixé⟩ ("I").
  • There is a near-minimal pair of [s] and [‍ʃ‍] in /posɨj/ ("heavy") and /po.ʃ‍ɨ/ ("ugly").
    • According to Rodrigues, /ʃ/ is a phoneme and is realized as [‍ʃ‍] and [tʃ‍]. The phone [‍ʃ‍] occurs in word–initial and medial positions, as in [iˈʃɛ] ("I"). The phone [tʃ‍] occurs in word-initial position, where it is in free variation with [‍ʃ‍], as in [tʃ‍jaˈsɔ] ~ [‍ʃ‍jaˈsɔ] (modernly represented as ⟨t'îasó⟩, meaning "let's go!"). This phone was recorded only by Anchieta, who represented it as ⟨ch⟩ on folio 23 of his grammar.
  • [h] is attested in only a few words. According to Barbosa, it appears in only "three or four" words. Gerardi lists five—specifically, all entries in Navarro's dictionary that begin with ⟨h⟩ (hai, hé, hegûé, hegûy, and hẽhẽ). Navarro's work also includes other entries containing ⟨h⟩ in non-initial position, namely ahẽ, ene'‍ĩ‍hengûy, eriaãhegûy, mahmõ, marãhẽ, tekehẽ, and tekenhanduruãhẽ (an alternative form of tekenhanduruã).

Nasals

  • /m/ is realized as [m] and [ᵐb]. It occurs in initial, medial, and final positions.
    • The phone [ᵐb] occurs in syllable-initial position and oral environments, as in /maʔe/ (realized as [ᵐba.ˈʔe], meaning "thing") and /kamɨ/ (realized as [kã.ˈᵐbɨ], meaning "milk").
    • The phone [m] occurs in all other contexts, as in /manõ/ (realized as [mã.ˈnõ], meaning "die").
    • It is represented in Navarro's orthography by ⟨m⟩ and ⟨mb⟩, as in ⟨ma'e⟩ ~ ⟨mba'e⟩ ("thing").
  • /n/ is realized as [n] and [ⁿd]. It occurs in initial, medial, and final positions.
    • The phone [ⁿd] occurs in syllable-initial position and oral environments, as in /ne/ (realized as [ˈⁿde], meaning "your") and /anɨra/ (realized as [a.ⁿdɨ.ˈra], meaning "bat").
    • The phone [n] occurs in all other contexts, as in /marakanã/ (realized as [ma.ra.kã.ˈnã], meaning "bird sp.").
    • It is represented in Navarro's orthography by ⟨n⟩ and ⟨nd⟩, as in ⟨ne⟩ ~ ⟨nde⟩ ("you").
  • /ŋ/ is realized as [ŋ] and [ᵑɡ]. It occurs in syllable-initial and syllable-final positions.
    • The phone [ŋ] occurs in syllable-final position, as in /pɨraŋ/ (realized as [pɨ.ˈrãŋ], meaning "red").
    • The phone [ᵑɡ] occurs in syllable-initial position, as in /posaŋa/ (realized as [po.ˈsã.ᵑɡə], meaning "medicine").
    • It is represented in Navarro's orthography by ⟨ng⟩, as in ⟨nhe'eng⟩ (realized as [ñɛˈʔɛŋ], meaning "to speak").

Flaps

  • /ɾ/ is realized as [ɾ] and [t̚‍] (or simply [t]). It occurs in initial, medial, and word-final positions, as in [ɾa.ˈko] ("actually"), [pi.ˈɾa] ("fish"), and [e.ˈkaɾ] ("seek").
    • The phone [ɾ] is in free variation with [t̚‍] (or simply [t]) in final position, as in /esaʔɨr/ (realized as [e.sa.ˈʔɨɾ] ~ [e.sa.ˈʔɨt̚‍], meaning "pupil").
    • It is represented in Navarro's orthography by ⟨r⟩, and sometimes at the end of a word by ⟨t⟩, as in ⟨ro'y⟩ ("cold") and ⟨xe r-a'yt!⟩ ("my son!").
Approximants
  • /w/ is realized as [w]. It occurs in word-initial, medial, and final positions, as in /waj/ ("tail"), /kawĩ/ ("manioc beer"), and /jukaw/ ("kill (non-focal)").
    • According to Navarro, it may also be realized as [gʷ] in syllable-initial position. According to Barbosa, the ⟨g⟩ was introduced there due to the "misperception of Portuguese and Spanish speakers". Navarro further explains this occurred because of the "proximity of the place of articulation".[citation needed]
    • It is represented in Navarro's orthography by ⟨û⟩ and ⟨gû⟩, as in ⟨ûyrá⟩ ~ ⟨gûyrá⟩ ("bird").
  • /j/ is realized as [‍j], [‍ɲ], and [ʒ] (or [dʒ], or [ʝ]). It occurs in initial, medial, and final positions.
    • The phone [‍j] occurs in oral environments and is in free variation with [ʒ] (or [dʒ], or [ʝ]) in syllable-initial position, as in /akaju/ (realized as [a.ka.ˈju] ~ [a.ka.ˈdʒu], meaning "year").
    • The phone [‍ɲ] occurs when preceded or followed by a nasal syllable, as in /jetiŋ/ (realized as [‍ɲẽ.ˈtĩŋ], meaning "fly species") and /atõja/ (realized as [a.ˈtõ.ɲã], meaning "touch").
    • It is represented in Navarro's orthography by ⟨î⟩ and ⟨nh⟩, as in ⟨îuká⟩ ("to kill"), ⟨a-î-ybõ⟩ ~ ⟨a-nh-ybõ⟩ ("I shoot an arrow at it") and ⟨kunhã⟩ ("woman").
  • Navarro also lists ⟨ŷ⟩ ([ɰ]), as in ⟨apŷaba⟩ ("man"), ⟨abŷabo⟩ ("transgressing"), and ⟨kapŷaba⟩ ("country house").

Typology

The following is a summary of the main characteristics of Classical Tupi, its typology and other distinguishing features.[page needed]

Pronouns

Oré excludes those listening, îandé includes them. (Father Antônio Vieira preaching to natives)[page needed]

Tupi features clusivity, i.e., a distinction between inclusive (including the addressee) and exclusive (excluding the addressee) first-person pronouns. Personal pronouns in Tupi come in two series, each with its own uses.

Personal pronouns
1st series2nd series Translation
ixéxe I
endénde You (sg.)
a'e*i He/she
oré oré We (exclusive)
îandé îandé We (inclusive)
peẽpe You (pl.)
a'e*i They
* a'e means this/these or that/those, but it can also be used as a third-person personal pronoun, both singular and plural.[page needed]

First series pronouns are generally used alone or along with verbs of the first class (those that are conjugated). For example: ixé a-karukatu: I ate well. Abápe morubixaba? – Ixé: who's the cacique? - I (am).

Second series pronouns are used in many different cases:

Verbs

Old Tupi verbs are divided in two classes. First class are conjugated, with person markers coming at the beginning of the word. In addition, verbs can represent a present, past, or future action because, unlike Portuguese, they do not express time. (The future, in particular, is done by adding the particle -ne to the end of the sentence, but this does not change the fact that the verb itself does not express time.)[page needed]

First class intransitive verbs
Pron. karu (eat) gûatá (walk) ker (sleep) pererek (jump) nhan (run) Translation
Ixé (I) akaru agûatá aker apererek anhan I eat/ate, walk/walked...
Endé (you) erekaru eregûatá ereker erepererek erenhan You eat/ate, walk/walked...
A'e (he*) okaru ogûatá oker opererek onhan He eats/ate, walks/walked...
Oré (we) orokaru orogûatá oroker oropererek oronhan We (exclusive) eat/ate, walk/walked...
Îandé (we) îakaru îagûatá îaker îapererek îanhan We (inclusive) eat/ate, walk/walked...
Peẽ (you) pekaru pegûatá peker pepererek penhan You (plural) eat/ate, walk/walked...
A'e (they*) okaru ogûatá oker opererek onhan They eat/ate, walk/walked...

Verbs from the second class are not conjugated and are used only with pronouns of the second series. This is because they are actually adjectives generally indicating a state or characteristic.

Transitive verbs

Abá îagûara onhybõ. The indian shot the jaguar with an arrow. (literally: the indian shot with an arrow it, the jaguar.) This is an example of the object -i- becoming -nho- close to nasals.

Objects of transitive verbs in Old Tupi may come in many positions relative to the verb: either before, after or incorporated into it. In the last case, it comes after the person markers (a-, ere-, o-, etc.) in first class verbs, but before the root. For an example of incorporation:

a- is the first-person marker, pirá means fish and kutuk to poke.

When the object is not incorporated, then in it is replaced by a pleonastic third-person pronoun-i-, even if the object is present elsewhere in the phrase. Monosyllabic verbs use -îo- (or also -nho- close to nasals) instead of -i-, and a few others use -s- instead. Some examples:

The pronoun -i- is incorporated and becomes a diphthong.
The monosyllabic verb sub (to visit) has -îo- incorporated.
The monosyllabic nasal verb mim (to hide) has -îo- or -nho- incorporated.
The verb ekyî (to pull) requires -s- instead of -i-. From Anchieta, Catecismo na Língua Brasílica.
For îuká (to kill), the incorporated object is absorbed by the verb since it already begins with î.

Future

Aker pytunane: I will sleep at night. Pytuna means night.

To express something happening in the future, the clitic -ne is always added to the last word in the sentence, independent of its grammatical class. This clitic has other meanings and may then be used as a particle in different positions.

Verb moods

Tupi verbs are divided into its verbal and its nominal forms. Each division contains its respective verb moods.

Verb moods in Old Tupi
Verbal forms Nominal forms
INDICATIVE MOOD WITH STRESSED OBJECT PRONOUNS
ixé a-gûatáI walk(kori) xe gûatá / nhaní(today) I walk/run
endé ere-gûatáYou (sg.) walk(kori) i gûatá / nhaní(today) you (sg.) walk/run
a'e o-gûatáHe/she walks(kori) o gûatá / nhaní(today) he/she walks/runs
oré oro-gûatáWe walk (excl.)(kori) oré gûatá / nhaní(today) we (excl.) walk/run
îandé îa-guatáWe walk (incl.)(kori) îandé gûatá / nhaní(today) we (incl.) walk/run
peẽ pe-guatáYou (pl.) walk(kori) peẽ gûatá / nhaní(today) you (pl.) walk/run
a'e o-guatáThey walk(kori) îandé gûatá / nhaní(today) we they walk/run
PERMISSIVE MOOD WITH STRESSED OBJECT PRONOUNS
ixé t'a-gûatámay I walkixé oro-îukáI kill you
endé t'ere-gûatámay you (sg.) walkxe îuká îepéYou kill me (subject: îepé)
a'e t'o-gûatámay he/she walkxe îûká a'ehe/she kills me
oré t'oro-gûatámay we (excl.) walkoré opo-îukáwe (excl.) kill you (pl.)
îandé t'îa-gûatámay we (incl.) walkîandé opo-îukáwe (incl.) kill you (pl.)
peẽ t'e pe-gûatámay you (pl.) walkxe îuká peîepéYou (pl.) kill me (subject: peîepé)
a'e t'o-gûatámay they walkxe oro-îuká a'eThey kill us
IMPERATIVE MOOD INFINITIVE (OR NOUN FORM)
(endé) e-gûatá!walk (you (sg.))!gûatá (the walk)nhana (the run)
(peẽ) pe-gûatá!walk (you (pl.))!îuká (the killing)tyma (the burial)
GERUND (INTRANSITIVE VERBS) GERUND (TRANSITIVE VERBS)
(ixé) gûi-gûatábo / gûi-nhana(I) walking(ixé) Pedro îukábo/tyma(I) killing/burying Pedro
(endé) gûi-guatábo / e-nhana(you (sg.)) walking/running(endé) Pedro îukábo / tyma(you (sg.)) killing/burying Pedro
(a'e) o-gûatábo / o-nhana(he/she) walking/running(a'e) Pedro îukábo / tyma(he/she) killing/burying Pedro
oro-gûatábo / oro-nhana(we (excl.)) walking/running(oré) Pedro îukábo / tyma(we (excl.)) killing/burying Pedro
îa-gûatábo / îa-nhana(we (incl.)) walking/running(îandé) Pedro îukábo / tyma(we (incl.)) killing/burying Pedro
pe-gûatábo / pe-nhana(you (pl.)) walking/running(peẽ) Pedro îukábo / tyma(you (pl.)) killing/burying Pedro
o-gûatábo / o-nhana(they) walking/running(a'e) Pedro îukábo / tyma(they) killing/burying Pedro

Nouns

All nouns in old Tupi end in a vowel. In the case of a verb or adjective substantivized, the suffix -a is added, if it does not already end in a vowel.[page needed]

The same occurs when a noun and an adjective are in composition. In this way:

Noun tenses

Although the martial art is of African origin, the word "capoeira" comes from Tupi, more precisely from ka'a-pûer-a, which means "forest that was". Painting by Johann Moritz Rugendas (1835)

Unlike the Portuguese language, the tense of an action, in old Tupi, is expressed by the noun, not the verb. Such tenses are future, past and a time called "unreal", which is similar to the future perfect, of Portuguese. They are indicated, respectively, by the adjectives -ram, -pûer and -rambûer. These, when in composition with the noun, receive the suffix -a, as explained above.[page needed]

Augmentative and diminutive

The degrees of the noun (augmentative and diminutive) are made by the suffixes "-'ĩ' or '-'i'", for the diminutive, and "-ûasu' or '-usu'" for the augmentative (these suffixes may suffer several phonetic transformations. Here are some examples with their explanations:

Diminutive Augmentative
-'ĩ or -'i -ûasu or -usu
Gûyra'ĩ Little bird 'Ygûasu Big river ('y means river; the g
was added later by the colonizers)
Ita'ĩ Pebbles (ita means stone) Kunumĩgûasu Young man
Pitangĩ Little child, baby
(Child is pitanga)
Ybytyrusu Mountain range
(from ybytyra, mountain)

Numerals

In Old Tupi, there are only numerals from one to four, both cardinal and ordinal, as the need for mathematical precision was small in a primitive economy. Cardinal numerals can either come after or before the noun they refer to, while ordinals only come after. For example, in the case of cardinal numbers, mokõî pykasu and pykasu mokõî are equivalent terms, meaning "two pigeons". In the case of ordinals, ta'yr-ypy means "first son (of a man)" and 'ara mosapyra means "third day".[page needed]

Cardinal numbersOrdinal numbers
1oîepé1stypy
2mokõî2ndmokõîa
3mosapyr3rdmosapyra
4(oîo)irundyk
(little used)
4th(oîo)irundyka
(little used)

Postpositions

They are the same as prepositions, but they come after the term they refer to. They are divided into unstressed postpositions, which are appended to the previous word, and stressed postpositions, which are written separately.[page needed]

Postposition Meaning Example Notes
suí from (origin) Morubixaba osem taba suí
The leader left the village
supé to (a person) Abá onhe'eng Maria supé
The Indian speaks to Maria.
-pe in, to (place) Ixé asó Nhoesembé-pe
I went to Nhoesembé
Unstressed postposition
pupé inside, with (instrumental) Kunumĩ oîkó ygara pupé
The boy is in the boat
resé for, in favor of Tuba oma'ẽ o a'yra resé
The father looks at his son
Postposition with several meanings

Just like in Portuguese or English, some verbs require certain postpositions:[page needed]

Negation

There are many ways to negate a sentence in Old Tupi.[page needed]

na ... i

Used to negate verbs in the indicative mood. Before a vowel, na just becomes n.

The same rule applies for adjectives:[page needed]

-e'ym(a)

Negates verbs in the infinitive or gerund form.

na ... ruã

N'a-s-aûsu benhẽ-î xûé Anhanga-ne: no more will I love the Demon, from Anchieta's Catecismo na Língua Brasílica. Note that aûsu (to love) is a transitive verb requiring -s- incorporation. Portrait of Anchieta by Oscar Pereira da Silva.

Used to negate a noun, pronoun or an adverb.

na ... i xué

Negates sentences in the future. The clitic -ne is still used.

umẽ or ymẽ

Negates verbs in the imperative and permissive moods.

Grammatical structure

Tupi was an agglutinative language with moderate degree of fusional features (nasal mutation of stop consonants in compounding, the use of some prefixes and suffixes), although Tupi is not a polysynthetic language.[citation needed]

Tupi parts of speech did not follow the same conventions of Indo-European languages:

Tupi had a split-intransitive grammatical alignment. Verbs were preceded by pronouns, which could be subject or object forms. Subject pronouns like a- "I" expressed the person was in control, while object pronouns like xe- "me" signified the person was not. The two types could be used alone or combined in transitive clauses, and they then functioned like subject and object in English:

Although Tupi verbs were not inflected, a number of pronominal variations existed to form a rather complex set of aspects regarding who did what to whom. That, together with the temporal inflection of the noun and the presence of tense markers like koára "today," made up a fully functional verbal system.

Word order played a key role in the formation of meaning:

Tupi had no means to inflect words for gender, so used adjectives instead. Some of these were:

The notion of gender was expressed, once again, together with the notion of age and that of "humanity" or "animality".

The notion of plural was also expressed by adjectives or numerals:

Unlike Indo-European languages, nouns were not implicitly masculine except for those provided with natural gender: abá "man" and kuñã[tã] "woman/girl"; for instance.

Without proper verbal inflection, all Tupi sentences were in the present or in the past. When needed, tense is indicated by adverbs like ko ara, "this day".

Adjectives and nouns, however, had temporal inflection:

That was often used as a semantic derivation process:

With respect to syntax, Tupi was mostly SOV, but word order tended to be free, as the presence of pronouns made it easy to tell the subject from the object. Nevertheless, native Tupi sentences tended to be quite short, as the Indians were not used to complex rhetorical[citation needed] or literary uses.

Most of the available data about Old Tupi are based on the tupinambá dialect, spoken in what is now the Brazilian state of São Paulo, but there were other dialects as well.

According to Edward Sapir's categories, Old Tupi could be characterized as follows:

  1. With respect to the concepts expressed: complex, of pure relation, that is, it expresses material and relational content by means of affixes and word order, respectively.
  2. With respect to the manner in which such concepts are expressed: a) fusional-agglutinative, b) symbolic or of internal inflection (using reduplication of syllables, functionally differentiated).
  3. With respect to the degree of cohesion of the semantic elements of the sentence: synthetic.

Vocabulary

'Y-pirang-a: Ipiranga, red river. It is the river where Pedro I declared the independence of Brazil.
Colors
Substances
People
The body
Animals

Tupi plays a huge role in the naming of many South American animals introduced to European knowledge and/or borrowed into their languages:

Plants
Society
Adjectives

Sample texts

The Lord's Prayer as in the Catechism in the Brasílica Language (1618)

Basic phrases

Here are some basic phrases in Old Tupi, some of which were attested by Europeans like Jean de Léry and Yves d'Évreux during the 16th century.

Lord's Prayer

This is the Lord's Prayer in Tupi, according to Anchieta in his Catecismo na língua brasílica.

Old tupi Literal Portuguese translation by Eduardo Navarro Literal English translation English (NIV)
Oré rub, ybakype tekoar, Nosso pai, o que está no céu, Our father, the one in heaven, Our Father in heaven,
i moetepyramo nde rera t'oîkó. como o que é louvado teu nome esteja. as the one hallowed your name may be. hallowed be your name,
T'our nde "Reino"! Que venha teu Reino! May your kingdom come! your kingdom come,
T'onhemonhang nde remimotara Que se faça tua vontade May your will be done, your will be done,
ybype, na terra, on earth, on earth
ybakype i nhemonhanga îabé! como o fazer-se dela no céu! as the doing of it in heaven! as it is in heaven.
Oré remi'u, 'ara îabi'õndûara, eîme'eng kori orébe. Nossa comida, a que é de cada dia, dá hoje para nós, Our food, which is every day, give us today, Give us today our daily bread.
Nde nhyrõ oré angaîpaba resé orébe, Perdoa tu nossos pecados a nós, Forgive you our sins for us, And forgive us our debts,
oré rerekomemûãsara supé como aos que nos tratam mal as for those who mistreat us as we also have forgiven our debtors.
oré nhyrõ îabé. nós perdoamos. we forgive.
Oré mo'arukar umẽ îepé "tentação" pupé, Não nos deixes tu fazer cair em tentação, Don't let us you fall into temptation, And lead us not into temptation,
oré pysyrõte îepé mba'eaíba suí. mas livra-nos tu das coisas más. but free us you from bad things. but deliver us from evil.

Notice that two Portuguese words, Reino (Kingdom) and tentação (temptation) have been borrowed, as such concepts would be rather difficult to express with pure Tupi words.

Influence

Painting portraying the arrival of Pedro Álvares Cabral and his crew at Porto Seguro in 1500. They quickly found natives and tried to communicate, all recorded by Pero Vaz de Caminha to Manuel I of Portugal.

As the basis for the língua geral, spoken throughout the country by white settlers and Indigenous people alike until the early 18th century, and still heard in isolated pockets until the early 20th century, Tupi left a strong mark on the Portuguese language of Brazil.

Tupi has given the Portuguese language:

Some municipalities which have Tupi names:

Among the many Tupi loanwords in Portuguese, the following are noteworthy for their widespread use:

It is interesting, however, that two of the most distinctive Brazilian animals, the jaguar and the tapir, are best known in Portuguese by non-Tupi names, onça and anta, despite being named in English with Tupi loanwords.

A significant number of Brazilians have Tupi names as well:

Some names of distinct Native American ancestry have obscure etymology because the tupinambá, like the Europeans, cherished traditional names which sometimes had become archaic. Some of such names are Moacir (reportedly meaning "son of pain") and Moema.

Literature

Old Tupi literature was composed mainly of religious and grammatical texts developed by Jesuit missionaries working among the colonial Brazilian people. The greatest poet to express in written Tupi language, and its first grammarian was José de Anchieta, who wrote over eighty poems and plays, compiled at his Lírica Portuguesa e Tupi. Later Brazilian authors, writing in Portuguese, employed Tupi in the speech of some of their characters.

See also

Notes and references

Notes

  1. ↑ Gerardi states it also occurs after [ɨ], but Navarro lists several words with ⟨ys⟩, only initially.
  2. 1 2 According to Lemos Barbosa, there was no exact translation for "four", so irundyk and its variants were little used.

References

  1. ↑ Navarro 2013.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Navarro 2005.
  3. ↑ Navarro, Eduardo de Almeida (23 July 2021). "Os nomes de origem indígena dos municípios paulistas: uma classificação". Estudos Linguísticos (São Paulo. 1978) (in Portuguese). 50 (2): 733–752. doi:10.21165/el.v50i2.2865. ISSN 1413-0939. Retrieved 7 September 2023.
  4. 1 2 Gerardi 2023, p. 43.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Resumo 2024.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Navarro 2005, p. 14.
  7. 1 2 Barbosa 1956, p. 411.
  8. ↑ Navarro 2005, p. 17.
  9. ↑ Barbosa 1956, pp. 28–29.
  10. ↑ Gerardi 2023, pp. 55–56.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Gerardi 2023, p. 47.
  12. ↑ Gerardi 2023, pp. 47–48.
  13. ↑ Navarro 2005, pp. 15–16.
  14. 1 2 3 4 Navarro 2005, p. 15.
  15. ↑ Navarro 2022, p. 7.
  16. ↑ Gerardi 2023, p. 48.
  17. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Gerardi 2023, p. 49.
  18. 1 2 3 4 Navarro 2005, p. 162.
  19. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Navarro 2005, p. 16.
  20. ↑ Cruz 2011, pp. 86, 91–94.
  21. ↑ Navarro 2013, pp. 533–534.
  22. ↑ Barbosa 1956, p. 27.
  23. ↑ Gerardi 2023, pp. 43–44.
  24. ↑ Navarro 2013, p. 145.
  25. ↑ Navarro 2013, p. 15.
  26. ↑ Navarro 2013, p. 103.
  27. ↑ Navarro 2013, p. 112.
  28. ↑ Navarro 2013, p. 254.
  29. ↑ Navarro 2013, p. 260.
  30. ↑ Navarro 2013, p. 471.
  31. 1 2 Gerardi 2023, pp. 49–50.
  32. 1 2 Navarro 2005, pp. 15–17.
  33. ↑ Gerardi 2023, p. 50.
  34. 1 2 Gerardi 2023, pp. 50–51.
  35. 1 2 3 4 Gerardi 2023, p. 51.
  36. 1 2 3 4 5 Gerardi 2023, p. 52.
  37. ↑ Barbosa 1956, p. 28.
  38. 1 2 Barbosa 1956, p. 29.
  39. 1 2 3 O português e o tupi no Brasil. Editora Contexto. 2 April 2024. ISBN 978-85-7244-472-9.
  40. 1 2 Navarro 2005, p. 60.
  41. ↑ Navarro 2005, p. 61.
  42. ↑ Navarro 2005, p. 62.
  43. 1 2 Navarro 2005, p. 138.
  44. ↑ Navarro 2005, p. 24.
  45. ↑ CURSO DE TUPI ANTIGO PELA INTERNET – LIÇÃO 8, parte 1 (in Brazilian Portuguese), 25 September 2020, archived from the original on 26 August 2022, retrieved 26 August 2022
  46. ↑ Navarro 2005, p. 151.
  47. ↑ Papavero, Nelson; Teixeira, Dante Martins (2014). "37. Catálogo da fauna brasileira no Século XVI". Zoonímia tupi nos escritos quinhentistas europeus (in Portuguese). São Paulo: Arquivos do NEHiLP. pp. 248–300. ISBN 978-85-7506-230-2.
  48. ↑ Simpson, George Gaylord (February 1941). "Vernacular Names of South American Mammals". Journal of Mammalogy. 22 (1): 1–17. doi:10.2307/1374677. JSTOR 1374677.
  49. ↑ Navarro 2005, p. 350.
  50. ↑ "Curso de Tupi Antigo". www.fflch.usp.br. Archived from the original on 25 May 2009.

Bibliography