Kamëntšá language

Indigenous language of the Kamëntšá people of Colombia

Kamëntšá is a language isolate and native language of the Kamëntšá people who primarily inhabit the Sibundoy Valley of the Putumayo Department in the south of Colombia.

Classification

Kamëntšá appears to be a language isolate. Researchers have tried connecting it to the Chibchan languages without success. Fabre reports that the Kamëntšá are descended, at least in part, from the Quillasinga, whose language is unattested.^[2]

Language contact

Jolkesky notes that there are lexical similarities with the Choco languages due to contact.^[3]

Varieties

Mason lists the following names as Coche (Mocoa) varieties.^[4]

• Sebondoy
• Quillacinga
• Patoco

Phonology

Consonants

1. Only in loanwords

Howard and O'Brien call the retroflex phonemes in the above table retroflex, while Huber & Reed use the alveolo-palatal symbols. More specifically, Howard uses ⟨tṣ⟩ and ⟨ṣ⟩,^[5] O'Brien uses ⟨tʂ⟩ and ⟨ʂ⟩,^[6] and Huber & Reed use ⟨tɕ⟩ and ⟨ɕ⟩.^[7]

Vowels

Huber & Reed, Howard, and O'Brien all analyze six vowel phonemes in Kamëntšá: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, and /ɨ/.^[7][8][9] O'Brien notes that /ɨ/ has a limited distribution and is rarely found at the beginnings of words,^[10] and that [i] in many cases may be an allophone of /e/ before palatal consonants.^[11] Howard found that /i/ and /e/ fluctuate in some morphemes, as do /u/ and /o/.^[12]

Grammar

Kamëntšá is a polysynthetic language with prefixes and suffixes.^[13] It also has dual number, which is unusual for languages around it.^[14][13]

Vocabulary

Huber & Reed's book provides a comparison between 68 indigenous languages of Colombia.^[15] The following table provides the order of words in the book, along with glosses in English and Spanish. The Kamëntšá words follow their orthography, i.e., using ⟨tɕ⟩ and ⟨ɕ⟩ instead of ⟨ʈʂ⟩ and ⟨ʂ⟩.

Notes

1. Kamëntšá at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Fabre 2020, p. 676.
3. Jolkesky 2016.
4. Mason 1950, p. 187.
5. Howard 1972, p. 78.
6. O'Brien 2018, p. 41.
7. Huber & Reed 1992, p. xx.
8. Howard 1972, p. 79.
9. O'Brien 2018, p. 34.
10. O'Brien 2018, pp. 38–39.
11. O'Brien 2018, pp. 36–38.
12. Howard 1972, p. 84.
13. O'Brien 2018, p. 27.
14. Mason 1950.
15. Huber & Reed 1992, p. viii.

Bibliography

• Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
• Fabre, Alain (2001). Kamsá, a poorly documented isolated language spoken in south-western Colombia (PDF). Linguistic Perspectives on Endangered Languages. Helsinki. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-03-31.
• Fabre, Alain (2020-06-20) [2005]. "Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos: KAMSÁ" (PDF). Electronic. OCLC 934761027. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2023-10-07. Retrieved 2023-12-29.
• Howard, Linda (1972). "Fonología del camsá" (PDF). Sistemas fonológicos de idiomas colombianos (in Spanish). Vol. I. pp. 77–92. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2023-12-29.
• Huber, Randall Q.; Reed, Robert B. (1992). Vocabulario comparativo: Palabras selectas de lenguas indígenas de Colombia [Comparative vocabulary: Selected words in indigenous languages of Colombia] (PDF). Bogotá: Summer Institute of Linguistics. ISBN 958-21-0037-0. Archived from the original on 2023-10-14.
• Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho de Valhery (2016). Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas (Ph.D. dissertation) (2 ed.). Brasília: University of Brasília.
• Kaufman, Terrence (1990). "Language History in South America: What We Know and How to Know More". In Payne, D. L. (ed.). Amazonian Linguistics: Studies in Lowland South American Languages. Austin: University of Texas Press. pp. 13–67. ISBN 0-292-70414-3.
• Kaufman, Terrence (1994). "The Native Languages of South America". In Mosley, C.; Asher, R. E. (eds.). Atlas of the World's Languages. London: Routledge. pp. 46–76.
• McDowell, John Holmes (1994). "So Wise Were Our Elders": Mythic Narratives of the Kamsá. Native American Studies. Vol. 6. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 9780813160368. OL 1397564M. (Contains mythic and legendary in Camsá with interlinear morphemic glossing and English translations.)
• Mason, John Alden (1950). "The languages of South America". In Steward, Julian (ed.). Handbook of South American Indians. Vol. 6. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. pp. 157–317.
• O'Brien, Colleen Alena (2018). A grammatical description of Kamsá, a language isolate of Colombia (PDF) (phd thesis). University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. hdl:10125/62512.