Siona

In this paper, numerous Spanish and Quechua borrowings into the indigenous languages of Cofán, Siona, Cayapa, Colorado and Waorani are extensively presented in semantic and phonological terms, and regular, suggestive sound correspondences for all such borrowings into these languages are summarized. The Spanish borrowings are summarized in semantic categories pertaining to almost all possible categories including agriculture, nature, warfare, seafare, medicine, commerce, numerals, religion, law, time, and the household. The Quechuan borrowings are far fewer and pertain to nature, the household, religion and some basic verbs. A new somewhat surprising finding is Quechuan borrowings into the Siona and Waorani languages, respectively. For a semantic comparison, Spanish lexical borrowings into the Aguaruna language are presented at the end.

In this paper, some lexicon of the Cofán language, spoken in northeastern Ecuador and southern Colombia, is etymologized as Barbacoan loanwords. The suggestions are described in phonological and semantic terms. The correspondences do represent borrowings, rather than being remnants of any tentative genealogic affinity between the two, because a brief grammatical comparison shows practically no similarities whatsoever. Further (Pre-Colonial?) contacts appear to have produced some Colorado (Barbacoan) borrowings also into Siona, and, curiously, what appears to be specific Waorani borrowings into Cofán as well as Cofán borrowings limited only to the neighboring Barbacoan language of Awa Pit. Further, a few borrowings are also to be found limited only to pairs of the above languages (Cofán, Siona, Waorani or the Barbacoan languages, all spoken close to each other). Furthermore, one suggested rare phonological Sprachbund feature shared between Awa Pit and Cofán consists of the voiceless high vowels that both languages use.

[Draft paper version 4]

This study describes the nasal system in Ecuadorian Siona, an endangered Western Tukanoan language spoken in the Ecuadorian province of Sucumbíos, using the Earbuds Method to analyze nasal events acoustically. This method provides a visual representation of the timing and duration of velum gestures through intensity (dB) and amplitude (Pa) fluctuations in the nasal and oral cavities. The studied events include nasal spreading (nasal harmony), triggers, targets, blockers, and transparent segments. Meanwhile, differences between nasal phonemes and nasal allophones are also identified along with the effects of morpheme boundaries during nasal spreading events. Results reveal that, unlike many other Tukanoan languages, /m/ and /n/ function as individual phonemes independent of their oral counterparts (/p ̰ / & /t̰ /). In addition, nasal harmony was identified as predominantly rightward spreading apart from syllable-delimited leftward spreading to vocoid segments. Moreover, suffixes responsible for blocking nasal spreading appear to be reminiscent of oral suffixes in Eastern Tukanoan languages. Finally, more blockers were identified in Ecuadorian Siona than in most Eastern Tukanoan languages.

Ecuadorian Siona (Western-Tukanoan) shows a rather distinct prosodic system from that described in other Tukanoan languages. Because of flat monotone responses produced during eliciting sessions in the field, we developed an on-the-spot method for data collection through loosely structured role-playing events involving the use of a script with lines specifically designed to elicit the utterance types. Skits were performed in pairs who stood at approximately 5 meters apart from each other to assure the dialog was vocalised as much as possible though without yelling. Each participant was accompanied by a researcher who provided the lines in Spanish e.g., “What are you doing?”. After each line was repeated in Siona, the other participant was asked to respond. Each participant wore a headmounted microphone and carried a digital recorder in a backpack to allow for mobility during the event. Results provided clear patterns for analysis that were not present during traditional elicitation ...

Ecuadorian Siona (Western-Tukanoan) shows a rather distinct prosodic system from that described in other Tukanoan languages. Because of flat monotone responses produced during eliciting sessions in the field, we developed an on-the-spot method for data collection through loosely structured role-playing events involving the use of a script with lines specifically designed to elicit the utterance types. Skits were performed in pairs who stood at approximately 5 meters apart from each other to assure the dialog was vocalised as much as possible though without yelling. Each participant was accompanied by a researcher who provided the lines in Spanish e.g., “What are you doing?”. After each line was repeated in Siona, the other participant was asked to respond. Each participant wore a headmounted microphone and carried a digital recorder in a backpack to allow for mobility during the event. Results provided clear patterns for analysis that were not present during traditional elicitation ...

In this paper, a fair number of new Páez loanword etymologies are presented, as borrowings from Spanish, Quechuan, Cofán, Portuguese, Tucanoan and Barbacoan lexical sources. Páez, a language isolate spoken in southwestern Colombia, is previously known to have borrowings from some of these sources, and, apparently, several of them are from Pre-Colonial times, after which Spanish borrowings in almost all possible semantic domains permeated the language. Old loanword etymologies from some of the same sources are presented, as are Páez phonology and the phonological changes occurring with the borrowings, before the new suggestions are discussed.

Ecuadorian Siona is a Western Tukanoan language spoken in eastern Ecuador. One of its remarkable features from a cross-linguistic perspective is its clause-typing system. Ecuadorian Siona has a special clause type for reports: the reportative. In the majority of the world’s languages, the reportative is considered to be an evidential category rather than a clause type. The reportative expresses the speaker’s access to the uttered information, namely, that it was obtained from someone else. The Ecuadorian Siona reportative is mutually exclusive with three other classical clause types that are part of its grammatical inventory: assertions (assertive clauses), questions (interrogative clauses) and orders (imperative clauses). The reason that the reportative can be considered as a separate clause type is that it has distinct subject agreement paradigms like the other clause types. Moreover, it exhibits clause-typing semantics. This dissertation presents an in-depth study of the clause-t...