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).
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.
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:[4]
The following examples show the remote past and perfective affixes:
I-ke
1SG-FM
=bakwe
=CONTR
[e-kwe
1SG-GEN
e-wane=tsewe]
1-wife=ASSOC
kanajara-kware
rest-REM.PAST
[e-kwe
1SG-GEN
tujuri=ju].
mosquito.net=LOC
'Me, I was resting with my wife in my mosquito net.'
Pakaka-wa
fall-PERF
=mi
=2SG(-FM)
[manga=ju=ke].
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)
[piya=kwana
arrow=PL
mariku=kwana
bag=PL
jadya].
and
'(They ran away and) left all their arrows and bags behind.' [5]
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
'After about ten years or so, the man went hunting again.' [6]
Cavineña is the first language in the Amazon for which an antipassive voice has been described.[7]
There are three subtypes of nouns in Cavineña:[8]
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[9] shows several of the case markers in context:
I-ke
1SG-FM
=bakwe
=CONTR
[e-kwe
1SG-GEN
e-wane=tsewe]
1-wife=ASSOC
kanajara-kware
rest-REM.PAST
[e-kwe
1SG-GEN
tujuri=ju].
mosquito.net=LOC
'Me, I was resting with my wife in my mosquito net.'
Pakaka-wa=mi
fall-PERF=2SG(-FM)
[manga=ju=ke].
mango.tree=LOC=LIG
'You fell from the mango tree.'
Ai=tu-ke=mi
INT=3SG-FM=2SG(-ERG)
mare-wa?
shoot-PERF
'What did you shoot?'
[10]
Noun phrases show the order:[11]
The following examples show some of these orders.
E-marikaka
NPF-cooking:pot
ebari=kwana
big=PL
'big cooking pots'
dutya
all
tunaja
3PL:GEN
etawiki=kwana
bedding=PL
e-tiru=ke
RES-burn-LIG
'all their bedding that had burnt'
(The clitic =ke 'ligature' appears at the end of a relative clause.)
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:
[12] 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.
Cavineña has ergative case marking on the subject of a transitive verb.[13] 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
'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 just went.'
E-ra=tu
1SG-ERG=3SG(-FM)
[e-kwe
1SG-GEN
tata-chi]
father-AFFTN
adeba-ya=ama.
know-IMPFV=NEG
'I do not know my father.' [14]
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:[15]
Tume=tuna-ja=tu-ke=Ø
then=3PL-DAT=3SG-FM=1SG(-ERG)
be-ti-wa
bring-GO.TEMP-PERF
budari.
banana
'I will go and bring bananas for them.' Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);
Kwadisha-ya
send-IMPFV
=tu-ke
=3SG-FM
=e-ra
=1SG-ERG
=e-kwe
=1SG-DAT
encomienda
package
[e-kwe
1SG-GEN
ata=ja=ishu].
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.)