| Kotiria | |
|---|---|
| Wanano | |
| Native to | Brazil, Colombia |
| Ethnicity | Kotiria |
Native speakers | (2,600 cited 1998–2007) |
Tucanoan
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | gvc |
| Glottolog | guan1269 |
| ELP | Wanano |
 | |
Kotiria (also known as Wanano) is a Tucanoan language spoken in the northwest part of Amazonas in Brazil and in Vaupés in Colombia. It is spoken by the Kotiria. The Kotiria and the closely related Pira-tapuya do not intermarry, but their languages are 75% lexically similar.
Kotiria is a member of the Tucanoan language family, which is found in northwest Amazonia. The Tukanoan family can be sub-categorized into two groups: Western Tukanoan Languages and Eastern Tucanoan Languages, Kotiria belonging to the Eastern Tucanoan family. The Eastern Tukanoan group is much larger than the Western Tukanoan family with 16 languages and around 28,000 speakers, while the Western Tucanoan family has 4 languages with around 3,000 speakers.
Kotiria belongs to the Northern branch of the Eastern Tucanoan languages, along with Tucano.
The first known work on the Kotiria language was a grammatical outline recorded by a Salesian missionary named Antônio Giacone in 1967. Since then a lot of work has been conducted by Nathan and Carolyn Waltz who have worked with the SIL organization in Colombia from 1963 to 1996. They have published a pedagogical grammar (Waltz 1976), papers on the aspects of Kotiria phonology (Waltz and Waltz 1967, Waltz 1982, Waltz 2002), a volume containing a study of Kotiria kinship terms, a grammatical sketch of the language and a long interlinearized text (Waltz and Waltz 1997) and the grammatical overview of Kotiria found in the Caro y Cuervo collection (Waltz and Waltz 2000). In 2007, Nathan Waltz published a Kotiria – Spanish dictionary (Waltz 2007). More research has been done on the Kotiria language by Dr. Kristine Stenzel who has been conducting research in the Upper Rio Negro area since 2000. She has published a book on the grammar of Kotiri) that discusses the morphology and syntax of the language (Stenzel 2015). Along with this book she has written many articles about different aspects of the Kotiria language and people (Stenzel 2005a, 2005b, 2006, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c, 2010, 2012, 2014) (Stenzel 2015).
Kotiria was described in a language documentation project funded by Programa de Documentação de Línguas e Culturas Indígenas (ProDocLin) at the Museu do Índio. The project was coordinated by Dr. Kristine Stenzel and was a teaching workshop of Kotiria pedagogical grammar (Saltarelli 2014).
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | ʔ | |
| voiced | b | d | ɡ | |||
| Affricate | tʃ | |||||
| Fricative | s | h | ||||
| Approximant | w | j | ||||
| Flap | r | |||||
Nasalization is carried on vowels. Voiced plosives and /j/ may surface as the nasal consonants [m], [n], [ŋ], and [ɲ] in the environment of nasal vowels.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | ɨ | u |
| Low | e | a | o |
Syllables may be marked with either a high or low stress accent. Nasalization is suprasegmental and moves from left to right through a word.
 | This section may be too technical for most readers to understand. (January 2020) |
Wanano is a nominative accusative language with an SOV sentence structure that contains the following grammatical categories: nouns, verbs, particles, pronouns, and interrogatives. These are outlined in Stenzel’s Reference Grammar of Wanano (2004). Under nouns Stenzel goes into further detail regarding the animates: human vs non-human animates and inanimates: mass nouns vs count nouns (xi). Stenzel discusses the pronouns which will be examined further below. For verbs Kotiria have suffix morphemes that indicate evidentiality, as well as imperative, interrogative and irregular morphemes. While there are adverbial morphemes in Kotiria, there are no adjectives.
Pronouns in Kotiria are categorized by personal, possessive, interrogative and demonstrative. A like English, gender is seen in 3rd person pronouns only. The pronouns are categorized into deictic for 1st and 2nd person and anaphoric for 3rd person.
| Singular | Plural | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deictic | 1st Person | EXCL | yʉ'ʉ | ~sa |
| INCL | ~badi | |||
| 2nd Person | ~bʉ'ʉ | ~bʉ-sa | ||
| Anaphoric | 3rd Person | F | ti-ko-ro | ti ~dubia |
| M | ti-ro | ti-~da | ||
ti-ro
ANPH-SG
yoa-ro-pʉ
be.long-PART-LOC
wa’a-ra
go-VIS.PERF.NON.1
He went far away.
| Singular | Plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st Person | EXCL | yʉ | ~sa |
| INCL | ~bari | ||
| 2nd Person | ~bʉ | ~bʉ'sa | |
| 3rd Person | to | ti | |
yʉ
1SG
phʉ-kʉ
parent-MASC
my father
| English | Kotiria |
|---|---|
| How much | ~do'o-puru |
| How many | ~do'o-pe |
| What | Yaba |
| Who | ~doa |
| Where | ~do'o-i |
~doa
who
hi-hari
INT.IMPERF
ti-ko-ro
ANPH-FEM-SG
Who is she?
| This | These | That | Those | Here | There (distal) | There (remote) | Other | |
| Deictic | a'ri | a'ri-~da | Si | si-~da (animate) si-re (inanimate) |
To | |||
| Anaphoric | ti | To | Pa | |||||
| Distance | ~o | ~so'o | To |
a’ri-ro
DEM:PROX-SG
This man
si-ro
DEM:PROX-SG
That man
~o-i
DEIC:PROX-LOC
Here
~so’o-pʉ
DEIC:DIST-LOC
There (distal)
to-pʉ
REM-LOC
There (remote)
pa-iro
other-NOM:SG
another one
Gender coding of nouns is a morphological aspect discussed in the grammar of Kotiria. Nouns with human referents are obligatorily marked for gender, most noun roots with human referents are masculine, otherwise feminine if marked by morpho-phonological means. The gender coding suffix -ko that appears at the end of the noun is feminine while -kʉ is masculine, for example phʉ-ko-ro (mother) and phʉ-kʉ-ro (father). Sometimes these endings can be reduced to o for feminine and ʉ for masculine. Examples of this are ~ducho-ro (grandmother) and ~duchʉ-ro (grandfather).
A mass noun is a noun that has no plural form, not meaning singular but that it is an uncountable referent. For example, you cannot count water however you can weigh it to measure its mass. By adding the morpheme –ro to the root of a mass noun or verb in Kotiria, it changes into a count noun. Some examples of this are: ko (water) is turned into ko-ro (rainstorm) by adding –ro; tha (grass) is turned into tha-ro (field).
Kotiria is a nominative-accusative case system, this means that the subject of the transitive and intransitive verbs are marked the same way.
Intransitive verbs are verbs that require a single nominal argument. Below are some examples.
yʉ’ʉ
1SG
hi-ha
COP-VIS.IMPERF.1
ko-iro
relative-NOM:SG
I am your/a relative.
~dubi-a
woman-PL
da’ra
work
wa’a-ra
go-VIS.IMPERF.NON.1
wese-pʉ
garden-LOC
Women go to work in the garden.
to
3SG.POSS
~badu-ro
husband-SG
pase-pʉ
far.away.-LOC
wa’a-a
go-ASSERT.PERF
Her husband left.
Transitive verbs are verbs that require two core nominal arguments.
a’ri
DEM:PROX
thu-re
CLS:stacked-OBJ
hoa-ha
write-VIS.IMPERF.1
~sa
1PL:EXC
kooti-ri-a
Wanano-NOM-PL
We Wananos are writing this book.
ti-ro
ANPH-SG
tia-ro
three-PART
ka-ya-re
black.monkey-PL-OBJ
~waha-a
kill-ASSERT.PERF
He killed three monkeys.
ti-ro
ANPH-SG
~yabi-re
night-TMP
~tidi-ra
walk-VIS.IMPERF.NON.1
A firefly comes out at night.
ti-ro
ANPH-SG
~da-ra
bring/take-VIS.IMPERF.NON.1
ti-re
ANPH-CLS:generic
ti-~phi-re
ANPH-CLS:bladelike-OBJ
wese-pʉ-re
garden-LOC-OBJ
He always takes the machete to the garden.
~bʉ’ʉ
2SG(POSS)
yahiri~pho’da-re
heart-OBJ
yʉ’ʉ-re
1SG-OBJ
wa-ga
give-IMPER
Give me your heart.
to
3SG.POSS
~ba-kʉ-ro-~ka-re
child-MASC-SG-DIM.-OBJ
~da-wʉa-rʉka-ga
bring/take-pick.up-INCEP-ASSERT.PERF
She picked up her little boy
As we can see from the examples above, Kotiria is a nominative accusative language. For example, in example 1, 1SG yʉˈʉ is the same as in example 8. In example 9, the 3SG to is the same as in example 3. As well as in example 6 ANPH-SG ti is the same as in example 5.
Transitive motion verbs frequently occur with adjunct expressions coded only by the locative -pʉ and there are certain motion verbs in Kotiria which can be syntactically transitive. In other words, they take a second, oblique argument coded by -pʉ-re.
~ayo
so/then
~o-pʉ-re
DEIC:PROX-LOC-OBJ
yʉ’ʉ
1SG
kho’a-wi’i-kʉ-ka
return-COMPL-NON.3.MASC-PREDICT.
That’s how I’ll get back here.
ku’tu-~ka-pʉ-re
clearing-DIM-LOC-OBJ
phi’a-sʉ-’a
MOV.out.into-COMPL-ASSERT.PERF
(He) went out into a little clearing.
Kotiria is typologically nominative-accusative, and that it codes the grammatical rather than the semantic roles of core arguments.
The most common plural morpheme used in Kotiria is -a/ ̴da. The alternation between the two is still unclear however there is a tendency for ̴da to be used for animates with human referents, for example pho’da (children), while –a is used for other animates. When pluralizing male or females the morphemes - ̴sʉba (male) and ̴sa ̴dubia (female) are used. Some examples of this are:
| female | male |
|---|---|
~dubi-a female-PL 'females' or 'women' |
~bʉ-a male-PL 'males' or 'men' |
~yucho grandmother ~sa 1.EXC.POSS ~dubi-a woman-PL 'grandmothers' |
~yuchʉ-~sʉba grandfather-PL 'grandfathers' or 'ancestors' |
~dabo wife ~sa 1.EXC.POSS ~dubi-a woman-PL 'wives' |
~badʉ-~sʉba husband-PL 'husbands' |
For pluralizing animals, since they are non-human the morpheme –a is used. There are some exceptions where –ya is used. Some examples of this are:
~phido-ro
snake
→
~phido-a
snake-PL
bora-ro
curupira
→
boraro-a
curupira-PL
~die-ro
dog
→
~die-ya
dogs
The word die-ya 'dogs' can become 'female dogs' when suffixed with ̴dubia 'woman'.
Dieya-
dogs
~dubia
females
Female dogs.