The Hup language (also called Hupdë,The letter ë stands for . Hupdá, Hupdé, Hupdá Makú, Jupdá, Makú, Makú-Hupdá, Makú De, Hupda, and Jupde) is one of the four Naduhup languages. It is spoken by the Hupda indigenous Amazonian peoples who live on the border between Colombia and the Brazilian state of Amazonas. There are approximately 1500 speakers of the Hup language. , according to the American linguist Patience Epps, Hup is not seriously endangered since, although the actual number of speakers is few, all Hupda children learn Hup as their first language.
History Although their territory was the target of forced transferrals throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, due to their isolation, the Naduhup were among the least affected, since they were protected by the geography of their land. They were also the target of several Catholic missions, though those ultimately failed, as the Naduhup refused to send their children to Catholic education centres.
Contact with the Tucanoan people, also known as the River Indians, who live along the rivers rather than in the forests, has significantly impacted the Naduhup, both culturally and linguistically. Since before European contact, the Naduhup and Tukanoan peoples have engaged in trade, the Naduhup providing labour and hunted meats and the Tucanoan providing agricultural goods. However, the Naduhup are viewed as inferior by the Tucanoan, because of their linguistic and lifestyle differences. Because of this inequality, most Naduhup people can understand and/or speak a Tucanoan, while it is the opposite vice versa – very few, if any Tucanoan people speak Hup.
Language profile Relatively few linguistic materials of Hup are available, due to the isolation of the Hupda. Incomplete vocabulary lists and dictionaries were established in 1955 (Giacone) and 1993 (Erickson and Erickson). The most complete descriptive grammar of Hup, A Grammar of Hup, was written by Patience Epps in 2005, was updated in 2008, and outlines Hup phonology, parts of speech, morphology, aspect, tense, modality, among many other features.
Hup is one of four languages in the Naduhup (Makú) family. Though Makú is the term most commonly used to refer to this language family, there is controversy over its usage, since it is also an ethnic slur, translating to “without language”, used by the Tukanoan towards the Naduhup. There has not been a consensus on a replacement term, although Epps proposed “Naduhup”, which combines the names of the four members of the language family - Nadëb, Dâw, Hup, and Yuhup. Of the four members of the language family, Hup is most closely related to Yuhup, followed by Dâw, and then lastly by Nadëb. Hup and Yuhup are nearly mutually intelligible, sharing more than 90% of their basic vocabularies.
Phonology
Consonants There are nineteen contrasting consonants in Hup, with the twentieth /p’/ occurring in the morpheme-initial position in only one word of only some Hup dialects. /j/, /g/, and /ç/ only appear in morpheme-final position, while all other consonants may appear in morpheme initial, medial, and final position. Hup has glottalized consonants of both stops and approximants which can be seen in the chart below. This language also has nasal allophones of the voiced stops.
BilabialDenti-alveolarPalatalVelarGlottalPlosivevoiceless voiced glottalized () Fricative Glideplain ejective
Adapted from Epps (2005), p. 40.
Vowels Hup contains a large segmental phonemic inventory, in comparison to the Tukanoan languages that neighbour it geographically. Hup vowels are composed of nine contrasting sounds, with no occurring diphthongs:
FrontCentralBackCloseMidOpen
However, these nine sounds occur only in non-nasal contexts. In nasal morphemes, there are only six distinct vowels:
FrontCentralBackCloseOpen
Adapted from Epps (2005)
According to Epps (2005), this indicates that the contrast between mid-vowels and high/low vowels are neutralised in nasal contexts. Nasalisation is morphemic at the syllable level and targets all segments – generally, every syllable is either fully nasal or fully oral.
Tonality Hup tonality functions in what is called a word-accent system – there is a word-level tone contrast system; the contrast is restricted to one syllable per word, which is predictable and also exhibits other features of stressed syllables (greater intensity, longer duration, and higher pitch). There are two tones: rising and high, which only appear in nouns and adjectives.
Hup TonesRising/cǎʔ/ [cǎʔ] "clump of roots"High/cáʔ/ [cáʔ] "box, nest"
Morphology Nouns and verbs are open class, while adjectives are closed class. Nouns usually appear as arguments of clauses and can appear bare in the clause, while verbs must be inflected in some way. Hup is highly agglutinative and concatenative, with a high rate of synthesis and low rate of phonological fusion of morphemes. Therefore, its morphemes are easily segmented. Roots typically undergo compounding, while formatives are affixed or cliticised.
Personal pronouns SubjectObjectObliquePossessiveDownriver Hup dialectsUmari Norte dialect1sgʔɑ̃h́ʔɑ́nʔɑ̃h́-ɑ̃t́nɨ̌nɨ̌h2sgʔɑ́mʔɑ́m-ɑ́nʔɑ́m-ɑ́tʔɑ́mɨ̌hʔɑ́m-nɨ̌h3sgtɨ́htɨ́h-ɑ́ntɨ́h-ɨ́ttɨnɨ̌htɨh-nɨ̌h1plʔɨ́nʔɨ́n-ɑ́nʔɨ́n-ɨ́tʔɨnɨ̌hʔɨn-nɨ̌h2plnɨ́ŋnɨ́ŋ-ɑ́nnɨ́ŋ-ɨ́tnɨŋɨ̌hnɨŋ-nɨ̌h3plhɨ́dhɨ́d-ɑ́n hɨɾan (TD)hɨ́d-ɨ́t [hɨɾɨt] (TD)hɨdnɨ̌h hɨdɨ̌h [hɨɾɨh] (TD)
yɨʔd’ə̌h-nɨ̌hhɨd-nɨ̌h Adapted from Epps (2005), p. 138
Demonstrative and Interrogative Pronouns InflectionDemonstratives (forms and meanings)Interrogativeuninflectednu- / nɨ- Proximaln'i- Distalyu- / yɨ- Intangiblecã- 'other'hɨ̃ Interrogative-p (from Dependent)núp 'this'n'íp 'that'yúp 'that'cãp 'another'hɨ̃p 'which?'-t (from Oblique)nút 'here'n'ít 'there'yɨ́t 'thus, then' -hɨ̃t 'where?'-ǎn Objectnú-uw-ǎn 'this-(FLR)-OBJ'n'í-iw-ǎn 'that-(FLR)-OBJ'yú-uw-ǎn 'that-(FLR)-OBJ'cã-ãw-ǎn 'another-(FLR)-OBJ'hɨ̃w-ǎn 'which one?'-V´t Obliquenú-uw-ṹt 'this-(FLR)-OBL'n'í-ĩw-ĩt 'that-(FLR)-OBL'yú-uw-út 'that-(FLR)-OBL'cã-ãw-ãt 'another-(FLR)-OBL'hɨ̃w-ɨ̃t 'with which one?'-Vp Dependentnú-ũw-ṹp 'this-(FLR)-DEP'n'i-ĩw-ĩp 'that-(FLR)-DEP'yú-uw-úp 'that-(FLR)-DEP'cã-ãw-ãp 'another-(FLR)-DEP'hɨ̃p 'which; how, in what manner?'-V´h Declarativenú-ũw-ṹh 'this-(FLR)-DECL'n'i-ĩw-ĩh 'that-(FLR)-DECL'yú-uw-úh 'that-(FLR)-DECLcã-ãw-ãh 'another-(FLR)-DECL' --Vʔ Interrogativenúw-ũʔ -n'íw-ĩʔ -yúw-uʔ -cãw-ãʔ - --cóʔ Locativenú-cóʔ 'in this place here'n'í-cóʔ 'in that place there'yɨ́-cóʔ 'over there'cã-ʔah-cóʔ 'in another place'hɨ̃-cóʔ 'at/ to what location?-d'əh Plural/ collectivenɨ-d'əh 'these'n'í-d'əh 'those'yɨ́--d'əh 'those, they'cã-d'əh 'others' -- n'ɨ́h Nominalizernɨ-n'ɨ́h 'these, this, about here'n'í-n'ɨ́h 'those, about there'yɨ́-n'ɨ́h 'those, thus'cã-- n'ɨ́h 'whatever'hɨ̃- n'ɨ́h 'what, what kind?'-ʔap Quantity,numbernáʔap 'this many'n'ip-ʔap 'that many'yɨ́-ʔap / yáʔap 'this many, all that' -hɨ̃-ʔap 'how many?' Semiverbal "Verby" nouns Some nouns of Hup are semi-verbal, namely those which have to do with the passage of time, as well as periods of time, which are “inherently progressive and impermanent.”
“Passage of time” words: wəhə́d "old man" wɑ́ "old woman" dóʔ "child"
“Periods of time” words: wɑ́g "day" j'ə́b "night"
While these words belong to the noun class (they typically appear as arguments of a clause, and aspectual inflection is not required), they have verb-like qualities, such as occurrence in verbal compounds (which is normally restricted to only verbs):
Respect markers The enclitic =wəd, derived from the word for “old man” wəhə́d, can be inserted as a respect marker when referring to spiritual beings or other humans. The feminine form of this is =wa.
This marker is usually used to refer to someone older or of higher status, though it can also be used to indicate someone to be feared, especially when used to refer to dangerous spirits.
The usage of =wəd is also not necessarily respectful. The enclitic can also be affixed to children's names as a sign of affection, comparable to doing the same in English with the titles “Mister” or “Miss”.
Negation Negation is complex in Hup, as three separate strategies can be used to express negation in the language. The most common form of indicating negation is through the negator suffix [-nɨ́h] on verbal or adjectival predicates (and not nominal predicates, which are negated with the identity negation article). Secondly, predicative particle [pã̌] can be used with noun phrases to express specifically the negation of the existence of a referent. Lastly, the article [ʔǎp] expresses negation against an entity within a clause or the against entire clause itself, where the most common use of this particle is as an identity negator with nominal predicates.
Adapted from Epps (2005), p. 726
Adapted from Epps (2005), p. 738
Adapted from Epps (2005), p. 742
Negative responses to questions or refusals to offers in Hup require one of the strategies above; there is no general lexeme/morpheme for 'no' in Hup.
Syntax
Basic syntactic word order The most frequent and grammatically simplest word order in Hup is Subject (Agent), Object, Verb (SOV). Epps notes that the agent, the actor/argument of a transitive sentence, precedes the object and verb in the syntactic structure of Hup.
Adapted from Epps (2005), p. 168
Adapted from Epps (2005), p. 180
The verb-final construction of clauses in Hup, as seen above, is best characterized as AOV (agent, object, verb).
Case and agreement Hup is nominative-accusative. All subjects are unmarked, while the object and other noun cases are suffixed. Which suffix is used can depend on number, animacy, type of noun, and grammatical function, as shown in the table below. Case marking extends also to the noun phrase and relative clause, and the suffixes attach to the final constituent of the phrase.
Grammatical functionNounsNouns marked for numberPronouns, demonstrativesS, A -ø -ø -øO (Direct object)Human: -ɑ̌n, Animal: -ɑ̌n (optional), Inanimate: -ø -ɑ̌n (Plural: -n’ɑ̌n) -ɑ̌nO (beneficiary, recipient of ditransitive verbs) -ɑ̌n -ɑ̌n (Plural: -n’ɑ̌n) -ɑ̌nDirectional oblique -anOblique -V́t -V́t -V́t
Adapted from Epps (2005), p. 143
Though the object case and directional oblique markers are almost identical phonologically, the only difference being the stress, directional oblique is mainly used to indicate direction, and sometimes, location, in which it coincides with oblique case.
Syntactically Bound Nouns In Hup, there is a class of nouns that must occur with a modifier. These nouns may have many different meanings, but generally all of the members of kin terms, human nouns, plant parts, and animal body parts are considered these 'bound' nouns. These bound nouns are also often closely related to the phenomenon of inalienable possession, but not necessarily. Outside of the aforementioned semantic sets of typically 'bound' nouns; other examples of bound nouns are "eggs, jars and other hollow items, holes belonging to insects, rivers, and a generic term for swarming insects."
Syntactic Constructions and Modification Modification is a semantic operation and syntactic construction by which referents in a language can be modified. There are three types of modifier constructions, each of which are present in Hup: subcategorizing modification, selecting modification, and situating modification.
Property Concept Modification Subcategorizing modification includes property concept modification. In Hup, property concept modification is constructed using a juxtaposition strategy (zero strategy). As noted by Epps, adjectives (property concepts in a modifying relationship with a referent) follow the nouns they modify, which is in contrast to other types of noun phrases containing a modifier like numerals, demonstratives, and compounded nouns, which precede the noun.
Numeral Modification