Arutani (Orotani, Urutani, also known as Awake, Auake, Auaqué, Aoaqui, Oewaku, Uruak) is a nearly extinct language spoken in Roraima, Brazil and in the Karum River area of Bolivar State, Venezuela. There are only five or six speakers left.
Documentation Arutani is one of the most poorly attested extant languages in South America. The language is documented solely in a 1911 word list collected by Theodor Koch-Grünberg (1928: 308-313), a 1940 word list by Armellada & Matallana (1942: 101-110),Armellada, Césareo de, and Baltazar de Matallana. 1942. Exploración Del Paragua. Boletín de La Sociedad Venezolana de Ciencias Naturales 53, 61-110. and a 100-item Swadesh list by Migliazza (1978).Migliazza, Ernest C. 1978. Maku, Sape and Uruak languages current status and basic lexicon. Anthropological Linguistics 20(3), 133-140. There is also an unpublished Swadesh list by Fèlix Cardona i Puig from the 1930s-1940s, as well as an unpublished 200-item Swadesh list by Walter Coppens from 1970.Coppens, Walter. 2008. Los Uruak (Arutani). In W. Coppens, M. Á. Perera, R. Lizarralde & H. Seijas (eds.) Los aborígenes de Venezuela. Volume 2, 747-770. Caracas: Fundación La Salle/Monte Avila Editores/Ediciones IVIC/Instituto Caribe de Antropología y Sociología.
Classification The language has been classified as a language isolate by most linguists. However, it has been grouped with neighbouring Sapé in a family termed the Arutani–Sape languages; this was first proposed by Morris Swadesh and Joseph Greenberg, but was expanded by Terrence Kaufman to include nearby Máku as well.
Language contact Marcelo Jolkesky (2016) identifies a number of similarities in vocabulary in Arutani with the Máku, Sape, Warao, Tikuna-Yuri, and Tukano language families. He ascribes these to language contact between them. For instance, lexical similarities in Arutani with Tucanoan languages are mostly cultural loanwords. The Arutani and Tucanoan languages also have completely different pronominal systems, and sound correspondences are irregular. Thus, similarities between them can be attributed to contact with Eastern Tucanoan.
Geographic distribution Čestmír Loukotka (1968) reports that it was previously spoken on the southern banks of Maracá Island in the Roraima, but later moved to the Uraricapara River near the Brazil–Venezuela border. Traditionally, Arutani was spoken along the Paragua River and Uraricaá River in southern Venezuela and the northern tip of Roraima, Brazil. The remaining speakers of Arutani are found in the following Ninam villages:
Saúba (in Brazil): 1 speaker born in Venezuela who has family in Kavaimakén Kosoiba (in the Upper Paragua River valley of Venezuela): 3 speakers Kavaimakén (in the Upper Paragua River valley of Venezuela): 1 speaker Colibri (in the Upper Paragua River valley of Venezuela): 1 speaker reported
Sociolinguistic situation Ethnic Arutani also speak Ninam (Shirián), since they now mostly live in Ninam villages.
Phonology Consonants LabialAlveolarPost-alv./PalatalVelarGlottalNasalStopAffricateFricativeApproximantTap has an allophone of . is an allophone of . is an allophone of .
Vowels FrontCentralBackCloseMidOpen
Stress Stres in Arutani typically falls on the final syllable, though it has also been recorded on the penultimate syllable.
Tone Arutani lacks lexical tone.
Morphology Arutani distinguishes inalienable and alienable possession, and has an instrumental/ergative case for nouns. It marks most grammatical categories via suffixes, enclitics, or particles at the end of clauses. However, person-marking on verbs and possessed nouns is expressed by prefixes instead.
Syntax The most common word order in Arutani is SV/AOV.
References
External links Alain Fabre, 2005. Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos: AWAKE Portal Japiim (online dictionary)