Itonama language

Itonama is a moribund language isolate once spoken by the Itonama people in the Amazonian lowlands of north-eastern Bolivia. It was spoken on the Itonomas River and Lake^[2] in Beni Department.

Itonama
sihni pandara
Native to	Bolivia
Region	Beni Department
Ethnicity	2,900 Itonama people (2006)[1]
Native speakers	1 (2012)[1]
Language family	Language isolate
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Bolivia
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ito
Glottolog	iton1250
ELP	Itonama
Itonama is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
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In Magdalena town on the western bank of the Itonama River (a tributary of the Iténez River), located in Iténez Province, only a few elderly people remember a few words and phrases.^[3]: 483

Language contact

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Nambikwaran languages due to contact.^[4]

An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)^[5] found lexical similarities between Itonama and Movima, likely due to contact.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ ⟨ï⟩	u
Mid	e ~ ɛ ⟨e⟩		o
Low		a ⟨a⟩

Diphthongs: /ai au/ ⟨ay aw⟩.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive/ Affricate	plain	p	t	tʃ ~ ts ⟨ch⟩	tʲ ⟨ty⟩	k ⟨k⟩	ʔ ⟨’⟩
	ejective		tʼ	tʃʼ ~ tsʼ ⟨chʼ⟩		kʼ ⟨kʼ⟩
	voiced	b	d
Fricative			s				h
Liquid	lateral		l
	rhotic		ɾ ⟨r⟩
Semivowel		w ~ β ⟨w⟩			j ⟨y⟩

The postalveolar affricates /tʃ tʃʼ/ have alveolar allophones [ts tsʼ]. Variation occurs between speakers, and even within the speech of a single person.

The semivowel /w/ is realized as a bilabial fricative [β] when preceded and followed by identical vowels.^[6]

Morphology

Itonama is a polysynthetic, head-marking, verb-initial language with an accusative alignment system along with an inverse subsystem in independent clauses, and straightforward accusative alignment in dependent clauses.

Nominal morphology lacks case declension and adpositions and so is simpler than verbal morphology (which has body-part and location incorporation, directionals, evidentials, verbal classifiers, among others).^[7]

Vocabulary

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Itonama.^[2] They are shown here alongside the forms cited in the Intercontinental Dictionary Series (IDS).

gloss	Itonama (Loukotka)	Itonama (IDS)
one	chash-káni	ukʼa’ne
two	chash-chupa	-chupa
tooth	huomóte	ohwomotʼe
tongue	páchosníla	ohpochosnila
hand	mapára	uhmaʼpara
woman	ubíka	wabï’ka
water	huanúhue	wanu’we
fire	ubári	ubari
moon	chakakáshka	u’tyahka’ka’ka
maize	udáme
jaguar	ótgu
house	úku	uku

See also

• Llanos de Moxos (archaeology)
• Macro-Paesan languages

Further reading

• Camp, E. L.; Liccardi, M. R. (1967). Itonama, castellano e inglés. (Vocabularios Bolivianos, 6.) Riberalta: Summer Institute of Linguistics.