Kanoé language
Encyclopedia
Kanoê or Kapishana is a nearly extinct
language isolate
of Brazil
. The Kapishana people now speak Portuguese
or other indigenous languages from intermarriage.
The language names are also spelled Kapixana, Kapixanã, and Canoé; yet another name is Guaratégaya, Guarategaja, Koaratira, Guaratira.
For a long time Kanoê was too poorly attested to classify. Various proposals were advanced on little evidence; Price (1978) for example thought Kanoê might be one of the Nambikwaran languages
. When it was finally described in some detail, by Bacelar (2004), it turned out to be a language isolate.
In the main Kanoê population of a hundred people, only three elders speak the language. However, in 1995 the discovery of an isolated family of two monolingual adults and a two-year-old child doubled the known population, and demonstrated that the language is not moribund.
/x/ is limited to a few verb forms, ‿where it occurs before /ĩ/. /ts/ is highly variable, [ts tʃ s ʃ], with the affricates being the more common, [ʃ] rare, and [tʃ ʃ] most common before /i u/. /r/ is [ɾ] between vowels, [d] after [n] and occasionally initially. /ɲ/ varies as [ȷ̃]. /n/ is [ŋ] before /k/, a pattern which occurs during metathesis. /p/ is very rarely realized as [ɓ]. /w/ /j/ are nasalized after nasal vowels.
Vowel qualities are /i ɛ æ ɨ a u ɔ/, all oral and nasal; the nasal vowels have slightly different or variable pronunciations: [ĩ], [ɛ̃]~[ẽ], [æ̃], [ɨ̃], [ã]~[ʌ̃], [ɔ̃]~[õ], [ũ].
Oral vowels are optionally nasalized next to nasal stops, with the variation of phonemically nasal vowels. /ɛ/ varies as [ɛ]~[e] after /ts/ and next to an approximant. /ɨ/ varies as [ɨ]~[ə] after voiceless consonants. /ɔ/ varies as [ɔ]~[o] after /p, m/. Vowels may have a voiceless offglide (effectively [h]) when not followed by a voiced sound.
Vowels are long when they constitute a morpheme of their own. Stress is on the last syllable of a word. Maximally complex syllable is CGVG, where G is a glide /j w/, or, due to epenthesis in certain morphological situations or to elision, the final consonant may be /m n/. One of the more syllabically complex words is /kwivɛjkaw/ 'to shave'. Vowel sequences occur, as in /eaere/ 'chief'.
Language death
In linguistics, language death is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language variety is decreased, eventually resulting in no native and/or fluent speakers of the variety...
language isolate
Language isolate
A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...
of Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. The Kapishana people now speak Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
or other indigenous languages from intermarriage.
The language names are also spelled Kapixana, Kapixanã, and Canoé; yet another name is Guaratégaya, Guarategaja, Koaratira, Guaratira.
For a long time Kanoê was too poorly attested to classify. Various proposals were advanced on little evidence; Price (1978) for example thought Kanoê might be one of the Nambikwaran languages
Nambikwaran languages
The Nambikwaran languages are a language family of half a dozen languages, all spoken in the state of Mato Grosso in Brazil. They have traditionally been considered dialects of a single language, but at least three of them are mutually unintelligible...
. When it was finally described in some detail, by Bacelar (2004), it turned out to be a language isolate.
In the main Kanoê population of a hundred people, only three elders speak the language. However, in 1995 the discovery of an isolated family of two monolingual adults and a two-year-old child doubled the known population, and demonstrated that the language is not moribund.
Phonology
Consonants| m | n | ɲ | |
| p | t | k | |
| β | ts | (x) | |
| w | r | j |
/x/ is limited to a few verb forms, ‿where it occurs before /ĩ/. /ts/ is highly variable, [ts tʃ s ʃ], with the affricates being the more common, [ʃ] rare, and [tʃ ʃ] most common before /i u/. /r/ is [ɾ] between vowels, [d] after [n] and occasionally initially. /ɲ/ varies as [ȷ̃]. /n/ is [ŋ] before /k/, a pattern which occurs during metathesis. /p/ is very rarely realized as [ɓ]. /w/ /j/ are nasalized after nasal vowels.
Vowel qualities are /i ɛ æ ɨ a u ɔ/, all oral and nasal; the nasal vowels have slightly different or variable pronunciations: [ĩ], [ɛ̃]~[ẽ], [æ̃], [ɨ̃], [ã]~[ʌ̃], [ɔ̃]~[õ], [ũ].
Oral vowels are optionally nasalized next to nasal stops, with the variation of phonemically nasal vowels. /ɛ/ varies as [ɛ]~[e] after /ts/ and next to an approximant. /ɨ/ varies as [ɨ]~[ə] after voiceless consonants. /ɔ/ varies as [ɔ]~[o] after /p, m/. Vowels may have a voiceless offglide (effectively [h]) when not followed by a voiced sound.
Vowels are long when they constitute a morpheme of their own. Stress is on the last syllable of a word. Maximally complex syllable is CGVG, where G is a glide /j w/, or, due to epenthesis in certain morphological situations or to elision, the final consonant may be /m n/. One of the more syllabically complex words is /kwivɛjkaw/ 'to shave'. Vowel sequences occur, as in /eaere/ 'chief'.