Allentiac (Alyentiyak), also known as Huarpe (Warpe), is an extinct Huarpean language.Canals Frau, Salvador. 1941. La lengua de los Huarpes de San Juan. Anales del Instituto de Etnografía Americana (o Anales del Instituto de Arqueología y Etnología) 2: 43-167. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza. It was native to Cuyo in Argentina, but was displaced to Chile in the late 16th century. The language is documented by Luis de Valdivia, a Jesuit missionary, who wrote a grammar, vocabulary and religious texts.
Phonology and orthography The assessment of Allentiac phonology is tentative and complicated by a lack of explanation on the phonetic value of the symbols used to write the language.
Vowels Allentiac had the vowels a, e, i, o, u, ù, the latter also written and probably representing , thereby having a vowel system reminiscent of that of neighboring Mapudungun. The vowel may not have always been written, resulting in what are apparently word-initial consonant clusters, and an instance of alternation is attested in ~ 'fire'.
Consonants is thought to be represented orthographically by before and before . are "almost certainly" pronounced the same as in Spanish. is written before , before "silent" , and in all other positions. An apparently syllabic lateral is also frequent, such as in 'finger'. A series of apparent sibilants are written as ; is rather limited in its distribution, found syllable-finally, typically before another consonant (as in 'I vanquish'), as well as in 'ostrich', is evidently a palatal sibilant due to alternations with as in ~ 'virgin', rather than a velar fricative as assumed by Bartolomé Mitre. is assumed to be a voiced fricative , apparently contrasting with the sequence between vowels; elsewhere it may have been voiceless . is tentatively assigned the value as in 'frog'.
Morphology From Valdivia's materials Allentiac may be seen as an agglutinative, predominantly suffixing language, with a "well-defined" series of case markers and postpositions, in contrast to Mapudungun.
Case +Allentiac case markersCaseAllentiaclocative -tacausal -tatibeneficiary -tayagdative -yeinstrumental -yencomitative -ymengenitive -(e)ch, -(i)ch
Possession The person of a possessor may be indicated by attaching the genitive case marker to a singular personal pronoun ( 'my', 'your', and 'his'), and by additionally affixing to the pronoun for a plural ( 'their'), though the plural marker in verb paradigms is .
Vocabulary
Numerals +Allentiac numeralsNumeralAllentiac1lcaa, lca2yemen3ltun4tut5horoc6zhillca7yemenqleu, zac yag8ltunqleu9tutqleu10tucum11lca tertecta12tucumta yemen13ltunqleu tucum, tucumta ltun qleu14tucug tutqleu20yementucum30ltun tucum40tut tucum100pataca300ltunpataca1000tucum pataca3000ltun nem tucum pataca
Color terms Color terms in Allentiac are formed by reduplicating an element followed by , as in 'black' and 'red'.
Sample text The Lord's Prayer in Allentiac:
References
Further reading