Itonama ( ) is an extinct 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 in Beni Department.
Geographic distribution
The Itonama have resided in their current area, corresponding to the current Mamoré and Iténez Provinces in Beni Department, since they were contacted by Spaniards in the 17th century. The last speakers of Itonama resided in the town of Magdalena, located on the western bank of the Itonama River (a tributary of the Iténez River), located in Iténez Province.
History Hardly anything of the original Itonama culture remains today, as they have been Christian for the past 300 years. In 2023, only a few elderly people could remember a few words and phrases of the language in Magdalena, thereby rendering Itonama "virtually extinct". In spite of the fact that Itonama has no speakers, a total of 1,249 people claimed to speak the language in 2012.
Language contact Marcelo Jolkesky (2016) identifies lexical similarities with the Nambikwaran languages, which he postulates is due to contact.
Classification In his classification of South American languages, American ethnologist Daniel Garrison Brinton (1891) left Itonama unclassified, followed in this respect by Alexander Francis Chamberlain (1910, 1913) and classified as an isolate by Czech linguist Čestmír Loukotka (1968). However, Clements Markham (1910) classified the Itonama as a branch of the Arawakan Moxo, and Loukotka's earlier 1935 classification identified influence from Arawakan languages. Morris Swadesh (1959, 1962) grouped Itonama with the Quechuan languages. Joseph Greenberg's 1987 classification in his book Language in the Americas grouped Itonama as a member of his universally rejected "Amerind" language family, within his "Chibchan-Paezan" subgroup.
Phonology Vowels Front Central Back High Mid ~ Low Diphthongs are .
Consonants Bilabial Alveolar Post-alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal Nasal Plosive/Affricate ~ ~ Fricative Liquid Semivowel ~ The postalveolar affricates have alveolar allophones . Variation occurs between speakers, and even within the speech of a single person.
The semivowel is realized as a bilabial fricative when preceded and followed by identical vowels.
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).
Vocabulary The forms cited here are from the Intercontinental Dictionary Series (IDS), which takes its data from Camp and Liccardi (1967).
{| class="wikitable sortable" ! gloss !! Itonama (IDS) |- | one || u-kʼaʔne |- | two || -tʃupa |- | tooth || oh-womotʼe |- | tongue || oh-potʃosnila |- | hand || uh-maʔpara |- | woman || wabɨʔka |- | water || wanuʔwe |- | fire || u-bari |- | moon || u-ʔtʲahka-ʔkaʔka |- | maize || u-tʃuʔu, kanasbɨstʃa |- | house || u-ku
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.
References
External links Sample of Itonama fragment Lenguas de Bolivia (online edition)