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Cavineña
Native to	Bolivia
Region	Beni Department
Native speakers	600 (2012)
Language family	Pano–Tacanan Tacanan Araona–Tacana Cavinena–Tacana Cavineña
Official status
Official language in	Bolivia
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cav
Glottolog	cavi1250
ELP	Cavineña

Cavineña is an indigenous language spoken on the Amazonian plains of northern Bolivia by over 1,000 Cavineño people. Although Cavineña is still spoken (and still learned by some children), it is an endangered language. Guillaume (2004) states that about 1200 people speak the language, out of a population of around 1700. Nearly all Cavineña are bilingual in Spanish.

The Cavineño people live in several communities near the Beni River, which flows north from the Andes. The nearest towns are Reyes (to the south) and Riberalta (to the north).

Phonology

Where the practical orthography is different from IPA, it is shown between angled brackets:

Examples in the morphology and syntax sections are written in the practical orthography.

Morphology

Verbs

Verbs do not show agreement with their arguments, but are inflected for tense, aspect, mood, negation, and aktionsart, among other categories. There are six tense, aspect, or mood affixes:

The following examples show the remote past and perfective affixes:

I-ke

1SG-FM

=bakwe

=CONTR

1-wife=ASSOC

kanajara-kware

rest-REM.PAST

.

mosquito.net=LOC

I-ke =bakwe kanajara-kware .

1SG-FM =CONTR 1SG-GEN 1-wife=ASSOC rest-REM.PAST 1SG-GEN mosquito.net=LOC

'Me, I was resting with my wife in my mosquito net.'

Pakaka-wa

fall-PERF

=mi

=2SG(-FM)

.

mango.tree=LOC=LIG

Pakaka-wa =mi .

fall-PERF =2SG(-FM) mango.tree=LOC=LIG

'You fell from the mango tree.'

Aktionsart suffixes include:

The following examples show the completive and reiterative suffixes:

Shana-tirya-kware

leave-COMP-REM.PAST

=tuna

=3PL(-ERG)

.

and

Shana-tirya-kware =tuna .

leave-COMP-REM.PAST =3PL(-ERG) arrow=PL bag=PL and

'(They ran away and) left all their arrows and bags behind.'

Peadya

one

tunka

ten

mara=kwana

year=APPROX

ju-atsu

be-SS

=tu

=3SG(-FM)

ekwita

person

kwa-nuka-kware

go-REITR-REM.PAST

babi=ra…

hunt=PURP.MOT

Peadya tunka mara=kwana ju-atsu =tu ekwita kwa-nuka-kware babi=ra…

one ten year=APPROX be-SS =3SG(-FM) person go-REITR-REM.PAST hunt=PURP.MOT

'After about ten years or so, the man went hunting again.'

Cavineña is the first language in the Amazon for which an antipassive voice has been described.

Cavineña has a periodic tense paradigm with four suffixes: diurnal -chinepe, nocturnal -sisa, auroral -wekaka and vesperal -apuna (Guillaume 2008:126), with cognates in the rest of Tacanan. These markers can be redundantly combined with temporal adverbs:

meta-tu

at.night-3SG

nei

rain

ju-sisa-kware.

be-NOCT-REM.PST

meta-tu nei ju-sisa-kware.

at.night-3SG rain be-NOCT-REM.PST

‘It rained all night long.’

Among the verbal suffixes, we also find a celerative -wisha encoding quick speed.

Iji-wisha-kwe

drink-CELER-IMP:SG

e-na!

DUMMY-water

Iji-wisha-kwe e-na!

drink-CELER-IMP:SG DUMMY-water

‘Drink your water quickly (and let’s go)!’ (Guillaume 2008: 202)

Syntax

Nouns and noun phrases

Subtypes of nouns

There are three subtypes of nouns in Cavineña:

1. e-nouns, which are a closed class of about 100 to 150 terms which must take a prefix e-. (The prefix is realised as y- before the vowel a).
2. kinship nouns, which are a small class of about 30 terms which are obligatorily inflected for their possessor.
3. independent nouns, which are an open class of a couple of thousand terms. Independent nouns do not take any e- prefix nor any possessor inflections.

Case marking

Case marking on noun phrases is shown through a set of clitic postpositions, including the following:

The dative and genitive cases are homophonous.

Pronouns (independent or bound) also show these case distinctions.

The following example shows several of the case markers in context:

I-ke

1SG-FM

=bakwe

=CONTR

1-wife=ASSOC

kanajara-kware

rest-REM.PAST

.

mosquito.net=LOC

I-ke =bakwe kanajara-kware .

1SG-FM =CONTR 1SG-GEN 1-wife=ASSOC rest-REM.PAST 1SG-GEN mosquito.net=LOC

'Me, I was resting with my wife in my mosquito net.'

Pakaka-wa=mi

fall-PERF=2SG(-FM)

.

mango.tree=LOC=LIG

Pakaka-wa=mi .

fall-PERF=2SG(-FM) mango.tree=LOC=LIG

'You fell from the mango tree.'

Ai=tu-ke=mi

INT=3SG-FM=2SG(-ERG)

mare-wa?

shoot-PERF

Ai=tu-ke=mi mare-wa?

INT=3SG-FM=2SG(-ERG) shoot-PERF

'What did you shoot?'

Order in noun phrases

Noun phrases show the order:

(Relative Clause)-(Quantifier)-(Possessor)-Noun-(Adjective)-(Plural marker)-(Relative clause)

The following examples show some of these orders.

E-marikaka

NPF-cooking:pot

ebari=kwana

big=PL

E-marikaka ebari=kwana

NPF-cooking:pot big=PL

'big cooking pots'

dutya

all

tunaja

3PL:GEN

etawiki=kwana

bedding=PL

e-tiru=ke

RES-burn-LIG

dutya tunaja etawiki=kwana e-tiru=ke

all 3PL:GEN bedding=PL RES-burn-LIG

'all their bedding that had burnt'

(The clitic =ke 'ligature' appears at the end of a relative clause.)

Pronouns

Pronouns in Cavineña can appear in either independent or bound forms. The two kinds of pronouns are pronounced almost exactly the same, but the bound pronouns appear in second position, after the first word of the sentence. Independent pronouns tend to be contrastive, and usually appear first in the sentence.

The following pronouns are found:

notes that the formative suffix -ke (of singular absolutive bound pronouns) and the ergative suffix -ra (in ergative bound pronouns) do not show up when absolutive or ergative pronouns occur last among the second position clitics.

Sentences

Cavineña has ergative case marking on the subject of a transitive verb. For sentences with a non-pronominal subject, this is shown with an ergative case clitic /=ra/:

Iba=ra=tu

jaguar=ERG=3SG(-FM)

iye-chine

kill-REC.PAST

takure.

chicken

Iba=ra=tu iye-chine takure.

jaguar=ERG=3SG(-FM) kill-REC.PAST chicken

'The jaguar killed the chicken.'

For a sentence with a pronominal subject, there are distinct ergative and absolutive forms of the pronouns:

I-ke=bakwe

1SG(ABS)-FM=CONTR

kwa-kware=dya=jutidya.

go-REM=FOC=RESTR

I-ke=bakwe kwa-kware=dya=jutidya.

1SG(ABS)-FM=CONTR go-REM=FOC=RESTR

'I just went.'

E-ra=tu

1SG-ERG=3SG(-FM)

father-AFFTN

adeba-ya=ama.

know-IMPFV=NEG

E-ra=tu adeba-ya=ama.

1SG-ERG=3SG(-FM) 1SG-GEN father-AFFTN know-IMPFV=NEG

'I do not know my father.'

Verbs do not inflect for the person of the subject or other arguments in the clause. Instead, a set of clitic pronouns occurs in the second position of the clause, as in the following examples:

Tume=tuna-ja=tu-ke=Ø

then=3PL-DAT=3SG-FM=1SG(-ERG)

be-ti-wa

bring-go.TEMP-PERF

budari.

banana

Tume=tuna-ja=tu-ke=Ø be-ti-wa budari.

then=3PL-DAT=3SG-FM=1SG(-ERG) bring-go.TEMP-PERF banana

'I will go and bring bananas for them.'

Kwadisha-ya

send-IMPFV

=tu-ke

=3SG-FM

=e-ra

=1SG-ERG

=e-kwe

=1SG-DAT

encomienda

package

.

relatives=GEN=PURP.GNL

Kwadisha-ya =tu-ke =e-ra =e-kwe encomienda .

send-IMPFV =3SG-FM =1SG-ERG =1SG-DAT package 1SG-GEN relatives=GEN=PURP.GNL

'I am sending a package to my relative.'

The clitics are ordered so that 3rd person pronouns precede 2nd person pronouns, which precede 1st person pronouns. (Some of the clitic pronouns in these examples have a formative element /-ke/ after them and some do not.)

References

1. Cavineña at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
2. "Constitution of Bolivia, Article 5. I." (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-01-26.
3. Guillaume 2004, p. 27.
4. Guillaume 2004.
5. Guillaume 2004, p. 193.
6. Guillaume 2004, p. 198.
7. Dixon, R.M.W. & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds) (1990). The Amazonian Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. xxvii
8. Guillaume Jacques (2023). "Periodic tense markers in the world's languages and their sources". Folia Linguistica. 57 (3): 539–562. doi:10.1515/flin-2023-2013.
9. Guillaume Jacques (2024). "Celerative: the encoding of speed in verbal morphology". STUF. 77 (2): 261–282. doi:10.1515/stuf-2024-2006.
10. Guillaume 2004, pp. 71–73.
11. Guillaume 2004, p. 526.
12. Guillaume 2004, p. 599.
13. Guillaume 2004, p. 69.
14. Guillaume 2004, p. 597.
15. Guillaume 2004, p. 527.
16. Guillaume 2004, p. 585.
17. Guillaume 2004, p. 595.

Bibliography

• Camp, Elizabeth L. (January 1985). "Split Ergativity in Cavineña". International Journal of American Linguistics. 51 (1): 38–58. doi:10.1086/465859.
• Camp, Elizabeth, L. and Millicent R. Liccardi. 1978. Necabahuityatira Isaraisara Huenehuene. (Aprendamos a Leer y Escribir), Cochabamba: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano. (Revised edition.)
• Guillaume, Antoine (2004). A grammar of Cavineña (PDF) (Ph.D. thesis thesis). La Trobe University.

FM:formative ASSOC:associative LIG:ligature APPROX:approximative COMP:completive REITR:reiterative INT:interrogative RESTR:restrictive CONTR:contrastive IMPFV:imperfective AFFTN:affection TEMP:temporarily NPF:noun prefix RES:resultative

External links

• Lenguas de Bolivia Archived 2019-09-04 at the Wayback Machine (online edition)
• Cavineña (Intercontinental Dictionary Series)

• Languages of Bolivia
• Tacanan languages
• Endangered indigenous languages of the Americas