Yanomaman (also Yanomam, Yanomáman, Yamomámi, Yanomamana, Shamatari, Shirianan) is a language
spoken by about 20,000 Yanomami people in southern Venezuela and northwestern Brazil
(Roraima, Amazonas).
== Subdivision == Yanomaman consists of five languages, very
similar to each other, sometimes classified as a dialect continuum:
Ninam (also known as Yanam, Yanam-Ninam) - 900 speakers
Sanumá (also known as Tsanuma, Sanima) - 5,100 speakers
Waiká - 6,000 speakers Yanomamö (also known as Yanomame, Yanomami)
- 20,000 speakers Yaroamë (also known as Jawari) - 400 speakersSunumá
is the most lexically distinct. Yanomamö has the most speakers (20,000), while Yaroame
has the fewest (400).
== Genetic relations == Yanomaman is usually not connected with any
other language family. Joseph Greenberg has suggested a relationship between Yanomaman
and Macro-Chibchan. Migliazza (1985) has suggested a connection with Panoan and Chibchan. Neither
proposal has been accepted.
== Name == Yanomami is not what the Yanomami call themselves
(an autonym), but rather it is a word in their language meaning "man" or "human being". The
American anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon adopted this term to use as an exonym to refer to
the culture and, by extension, the people. The word is correctly pronounced thorough
nasalisation. As the phonetic sound 'ö' does not occur in English, variations in spelling
and pronunciation of the name have developed, with Yanomami, Yanomamö, Ya̧nomamö, and
Yanomama all being used. Some anthropologists had published the spelling Yanomamɨ to indicate
the correct vowel [ɨ], but because many presses and typesetters eliminate the diacritical
marks, an incorrect pronunciation of the name has emerged.
== Characteristics ==
=== Phonology === Yanomami languages have a distinction between
oral and nasal vowels. There are seven basic vowels: a, e, i, o, u, ɨ (also spelled y),
ə. In the Yanam language, u has merged with ɨ.
In the Yanomaman languages, if a vowel is phonetically nasalized, then all vowels after
it in the word are also nasalized. So if the ogonek—the symbol denoting nasalized vowels—is
written under the first vowel, the whole word is nasalized. All the vowels in the Yanomaman
language can be made nasal, but it is unclear whether they are phonemically nasal or nasal
just because of the nasal consonants.
=== Syntax === Yanomaman languages are SOV, suffixing, predominantly
head-marking with elements of dependent-marking. Its typology is highly polysynthetic. Adjectival
concepts are expressed by means of stative verbs, there are no true adjectives. Adjectival
stative verbs follow their noun. There are five demonstratives which have to
be chosen according to distance from speaker and hearer and also according to visibility,
a feature shared by many native Brazilian languages such as Tupian ones including Old
Tupi. Demonstratives, numerals, classifiers and quantifiers precede the head noun.
There is a distinction between alienable and inalienable possession, again a common areal
feature, and a rich system of verbal classifiers, almost a hundred, they are obligatory and
appear just before the verb root. The distinction between inclusive and exclusive 1st person
plural, a feature shared by most Native American languages, has been lost in Yanam and Yanomam
dialects, but retained in the others. Yanomami morphosyntactic alignment is ergative–absolutive,
which means that the subject of an intransitive verb is marked the same way as the object
of a transitive verb, while the subject of transitive verb is marked differently. The
ergative case marker is -ny. The verb agrees with both subject and object.
Evidentiality on Yanomami dialect is marked on the verb and has four levels: eyewitness,
deduced, reported, and assumed. Other dialects have fewer levels.
The object of the verb can be incorporated into it, especially if it not in focus:
Non-incorporated:
kamijə-ny sipara ja-puhi-i 1sg-ERG axe 1sg-want-DYNAMIC
'I want an/the axe'Incorporated:
kamijə-ny ja-sipara-puhi-i 1sg-ERG 1sg-axe-want-DYN
'I want [it], the axe'Relative clauses are formed by adding a relativizing ('REL' below)
suffix to the verb:
wãro-n shama shyra-wei ware-ma man-ERG tapir kill-REL eat-COMPL
'the man who killed the tapir ate it'Sanuma dialect also has a relative pronoun ĩ.
== References ==
== Bibliography == Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. & Dixon R.M.W. (1999)
The Amazonian Languages Cambridge Language Surveys (p. 341-351)
Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America.
New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1. Greenberg, Joseph H. (1960). General classification
of Central and South American languages. In A. Wallace (Ed.), Men and cultures: Fifth
international congress of anthropological and ethnological sciences (1956) (pp. 791–794).
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Greenberg, Joseph H. (1987). Language in the
Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Kaufman, Terrence. (1990). Language history
in South America: What we know and how to know more. In D. L. Payne (Ed.), Amazonian
linguistics: Studies in lowland South American languages (pp. 13–67). Austin: University
of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-70414-3. Kaufman, Terrence. (1994). The native languages
of South America. In C. Mosley & R. E. Asher (Eds.), Atlas of the world's languages (pp.
46–76). London: Routledge. Migliazza, Ernest C. (1985). Languages of
the Orinoco-Amazon region: Current status. In H. E. Manelis Klein & L. R. Stark (Eds.),
South American Indian languages: Retrospect and prospect (pp. 17–139). Austin: University
of Texas Press. Migliazza, Ernest C.; & Campbell, Lyle. (1988).
Panorama general de las lenguas indígenas en América. Historia general de América
(Vol. 10). Caracas: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.
=== Dictionaries === Müller, Marie-Claude Mattei. (2007) Diccionario
ilustrado yanomami-español / español-yanomami. Caracas: Epsilon Libros. 782pp.
== External links == Grupo yanomáman (in Spanish). PROEL – Promotora
Española de Lingüística. ELAR archive of Documentation and Description
of the Yanomama of Papiu The Yanomami Language