Cavineña is an indigenous language spoken on the Amazonian plains of northern Bolivia by over 1,000 Cavineño people. Although Cavineña is still spoken (and still learnt by some children), it is an endangered
language. Guillaume (2004) states that about 1200 people speak the language, out of a population of around 1700. Nearly all Cavineña are bilingual in Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

.

The Caviñeno people live in several communities near the Beni River, which flows north from the Andes. The nearest towns are Reyes (to the south) and Riberalta (to the north).

Phonology

Caviñena has the following consonants (Guillaume 2004:27). Where the practical orthography is different from IPA, it is shown between angled brackets:

|bilabial	velar	alveolar	alveo-palatal	glottal
voiceless stop	p	k	t	c
voiced stop	b		d	ɟ
labialized stop	kw
voiceless affricate			ts	t͡ɕ
voiceless fricative			s	ɕ	h
liquid			r	ʎ
nasal	m		n	ɲ
glide	w			j

It has the following vowels

|Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e
Low		a

Examples in the morphology and syntax sections are written in the practical orthography.

Subtypes of nouns

There are three subtypes of nouns in Cavineña (Guillaume 2004:71-73).

• e-nouns, which are a closed class of about 100 to 150 terms which must take a

a prefix e-. (The prefix is realised as y- before the vowel a).

• kinship nouns, which are a small class of about 30 terms which are

obligatorily inflected for their possessor.

• independent nouns, which are an open class of a couple of thousand terms. Independent nouns do

not take any e- prefix nor any possessor inflections.

Case marking

Case marking on noun phrases is shown through a set of clitic postpositions, including the following:

• =ra 'ergative case'
• =tsewe 'associative case' (= English 'with')
• =ja 'dative case'
• =ja 'genitive case'
• =ja 'locative case'

Pronouns (independent or bound) also show these case distinctions.

The following example (Guillame 2004:526) shows several of the case markers in context:

I-ke=bakwe	[e-kwe	e-wane=tsewe]	kanajara-kware	[e-kwe tujuri=ju].
1SG-FM =CONTRAST	1SG-GEN	1-wife=ASSOC	rest-REMOTE.PAST	1SG-GEN mosquito.net=LOC
'Me, I was resting with my wife in my mosquito net.'

Pakaka-wa =mi	[manga=ju=ke].
fall-PERF =2SG(-FM)	mango.tree=LOC=LIG
'You fell from the mango tree.'

Ai =tu-ke =mi	mare-wa?
INT =3SG-FM =2SG(-ERG)	shoot-PERF
'What did you shoot?'

(Guillaume 2004:599)

Order in noun phrases

Noun phrases show the order (Relative Clause)-(Quantifier)-(Possessor)-Noun-(Adjective)-(Plural marker)-(Relative clause) (Guillaume 2004:69). The following examples show some of these orders.

E-marikaka	ebari=kwana
nounprefix-cooking:pot	big=plur
'big cooking pots'

dutya	tunaja	etawiki=kwana	e-tiru=ke
all	3:plur:genitive	bedding=plur	res-burn-ligature
'all their bedding that had burnt'

(The clitic =ke 'ligature' appears at the end of a relative clause.)

Pronouns

Pronouns in Caviñena can appear in either independent or bound forms. The two kinds of pronouns are pronounced almost exactly the same, but the bound pronouns appear in second position, after the first word of the sentence. Independent pronouns tend to be contrastive, and usually appear first in the sentence.

The following pronouns are found:

Absolutive pronouns
person	SG	DL	PL
1	i-Ø-ke	ya-tse	e-kwana
2	mi-Ø-ke	me-tse	mi-kwana
3	tu-Ø-ke	ta-tse	tu-na
3PROX	ri-Ø-ke	re-tse	re-na

Ergative pronouns
person	SG	DL	PL
1	e-Ø-ra	ya-tse-ra	e-kwana-ra
2	mi-Ø-ra	me-tse-ra	mi-kwana-ra
3	tu-Ø-ra	ta-tse-ra	tu-na-ra
3PROX	riya-Ø-ra(?)	re-tse-ra	re-na-ra

Dative pronouns
person	SG	DL	PL
1	e-Ø-kwe	ya-tse-ja	e-kwana-ja
2	mi-Ø-kwe	me-tse-ja	mi-kwana-ja
3	tu-Ø-ja	ta-tse-ja	tu-na-ja
3PROX	re-Ø-ja	re-tse-ja	re-na-ja

Guillaume (2004:597) notes that the formative suffix -ke (of singular absolutive bound pronouns) and the ergative suffix -ra (in ergative bound pronouns) do not show up when absolutive or ergative pronouns occur last among the second position clitics.

Sentences

Caviñena has ergative case marking on the subject of a transitive verb (Guillaume 2004:527). For sentences with a non-pronominal subject, this is shown with an ergative case clitic /=ra/:

Iba=ra=tu	iye-chine	takure.
jaguar=ERG=3SG(-FM)	kill-RECENT.PAST	chicken
'The jaguar killed the chicken.'

For a sentence with a pronominal subject, there are distinct ergative and absolutive forms forms of the pronouns:

I-ke=bakwe	kwa-kware=dya=jutidya.
1SG(ABS)-FM=CONTR	go-REM.PAST=FOC=RESTR
'I just went.'

E-ra=tu	[e-kwe	tata-chi]	adeba-ya=ama.
1SG-ERG =3SG(-FM)	1SG-GEN	father-AFFTN	know-IMPFV=NEG
'I do not know my father.' (Guillaume 2004:585)

Verbs do not inflect for the person of the subject or other arguments in the clause. Instead, a set of clitic pronouns occurs in the second position of the clause, as in the following examples (Guillaume 2004:595):

Tume =tuna-ja =tu-ke =Ø	be-ti-wa	budari.
then =3PL-DAT =3SG-FM =1SG(-ERG)	bring-GO.TEMP-PERF	banana
'I will go and bring bananas for them.'

Kwadisha-ya =tu-ke =e-ra =e-kwe	encomienda	[e-kwe	ata=ja=ishu].
send-IMPERFECTIVE =3SG-FM =1SG-ERG =1SG-DAT	package	1SG-GEN	relatives=GEN=PURP.GNL
'I am sending a packing to my relatives.'

The clitics are ordered so that 3rd person pronouns precede 2nd person pronouns, which precede 1st person pronouns. (Some of the clitic pronouns in these examples have a formative element /-ke/ after them and some do not.)

External links

• Cavineña @ Ethnologue