| Tiriyó | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| tarëno ijomi | ||||
| Pronunciation | [taɽəːno ijoːmi] | |||
| Spoken in | Brazil, Suriname | |||
| Region | Northern Amazonia, Guianas Plateau | |||
| Ethnicity | Tiriyó people | |||
| Native speakers | ~2,000 (in 2005) (date missing) | |||
| Language family |
Cariban
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | tri | |||
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The Tiriyó language (also known as Trio, autonym tarëno), is spoken by approximately 2,000 people living in several villages on both sides of the Brazil-Suriname border in Northern Amazonia. It is a relatively healthy language, learned by all children as their mother tongue and actively used in all areas of life by its speakers. Most of the Tiriyó (there are no precise numbers, but impressionistic observation would suggest more than half) are monolingual speakers. Of course, the long-term survival of their language, as is the case for almost all native South American languages, remains an open question.
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Tiriyó has been classified as belonging to the Taranoan group of the Guianan sub-branch of Cariban, together with Karihona (Carijona), in Colombia, and Akuriyó, in Suriname, the former with a few, and the latter with apparently no, speakers left.
There seem to be two main dialects in the Tiriyó-speaking area, called by Jones (1972) Eastern or Tapanahoni basin, and Western or Sipaliwini basin dialects, and by Meira (2000, to appear) K-Tiriyó and H-Tiriyó. The main difference thus far reported is phonological: the different realization of what were (historically) clusters involving /h/ and a stop (see Phonology section below). Grammatical and/or lexical differences may also exist, but the examples thus far produced are disputed.
Demographically, H-Tiriyó is the most important dialect (~ 60% of the speakers). It is the dialect spoken in the village of Kwamalasamutu, Suriname, and in the villages along the Western Paru river (Tawainen or Missão Tiriós, Kaikui Tëpu, Santo Antônio) and also along the Marapi river (Kuxare, Yawa, etc.). K-Tiriyó is spoken in the villages along the Eastern Paru river (Mataware, and some people at Bonna) in Brazil, and in the villages of Tepoe and Paloemeu in Suriname.
Tiriyó has 9 vowels and 7 consonants, as shown in the chart below. (Orthographic symbols in bold, IPA values in square brackets.)
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i /i/ | ï /ɨ/ | u /u/ |
| Mid | e /e/ | ë /ə/ | o /o/ |
| Open | a /a/ |
| Bilabial | Dental | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m /m/ | n /n/ | |||
| Plosive | p /p/ | t /t/ | k /k/ | ||
| Fricative | s /s/ | h /h/ | |||
| Tap | r /ɾ/ | ||||
| Approximant | w /β/ | j /j/ | |||
| Proto-form | H-Tiriyó | K-Tiriyó | Gloss |
|---|---|---|---|
| *mahto | [mahtɔ] | [maatɔ] | fire |
| *tuhka | [tu(h)ha] | [tuuka] | Brazil nut |
| *pihpə | [pi(h)ɸə] | [piipə] | skin |
| *wɨhse | [ʋɨ(h)s̠e]~[ʋɨːs̠e]~[ʋɨs̠s̠e] | [ʋɨɨs̠e] | anatto |
The basic syllable template is (C1)V1(V2)(C2) -- i.e., the possible syllable types are:
| V1 | V1V2 | V1C2 | V1V2C2 |
| C1V1 | C1V1V2 | C1V1C2 | C1V1V2C2. |
Tiriyó stress follows a rhythmic pattern of the kind Hayes (1995) calls iambic. Phonetically:
Examples (acute accents mark stress, and colons length):
| Syllable type | Underlying form | Phonetic | Gloss |
|---|---|---|---|
| (C)V-only | /amatakana/ | [a.ˈmaː.ta.ˈkaː.na] | 'toucan sp.' |
| /kɨtapotomapone/ | [kɨ.ˈtaː.po.ˈtoː.ma.ˈpoː.ne] | 'you all helped him/her/it' | |
| non-(C)V-only | /mempakane/ | [ˈmem.pa.ˈkaː.ne] | 'you woke him/her up' |
| /kehtəne/ | [ˈkeh.tə.ne] | 'we (I+you) were' | |
| /meekane/ | [ˈmeː.ka.ne] | 'you bit him/her/it' |
Note that some words apparently follow the opposite - trochaic - pattern (e.g., /meekane/ above). For these words, an underlying sequence of identical vowels is proposed. Cognate words from related languages provide evidence for this analysis: compare the Tiriyó stem /eeka/ 'bite' with e.g. Waiwai, Katxuyana, Hixkaryana /eska/, Panare /ehka/, Karihona /eseka/, suggesting a historical process of syllable reduction with subsequent compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel.
Since stress depends only on the type and number of syllables, morphological processes that involve syllabic prefixes or suffixes affect stress:
In Hayes' framework, one could argue that stress placement is based on pairs of syllables (feet) consisting of either two (C)V (light) or one non-(C)V (heavy) syllables, except for the last syllable, which is extrametric, i.e. never forms a foot. This would explain the lack of stress in bisyllabic words: an initial light syllable, left alone by the extrametricity of the final syllable, cannot form a foot by itself and remains unstressed.
Reduplication in Tiriyó affects verbs (regularly) and also nouns and adverbials (irregularly: not all of them). On verbs, it usually marks iteration or repetition (e.g.: wïtëe 'I go, I am going', wïtë-wïtëe 'I keep going, I always go, I go again and again'); on nouns and adverbials, several examples of an entity, or several instances of a phenomenon (e.g.: kutuma 'painful', kuu-kuutuma 'painful all over, feeling pain all over one's body'; sikinman '(something) black', siki-sikiman-ton 'a number of black things' (including also the plural marker -ton; see below).
Formally, there are two reduplicative patterns, termed internal and external reduplication. External reduplication is a regular process that copies the first two moras of a complete word (i.e., the first two syllables if they are light, or the first syllable if it is heavy). Coda consonants are not reduplicated: the preceding vowel is copied as long (i.e. as a VV sequence). If a syllable contains two vowels, some (older?) speakers copy both vowels, while other (younger?) speakers copy only the first vowel and lengthen it (i.e. turn it into a VV sequence).
| Base | Gloss | Reduplication | Gloss |
|---|---|---|---|
| wekarama | 'I gave it' | weka-wekarama | 'I kept giving it' |
| mempaka | 'you woke him/her up' | mee-mempaka | 'you kept waking him/her up' |
| waitëne | 'I pushed it' | waa-waitëne, or: wai-waitëne |
'I pushed it again and again' |
Internal reduplication affects the interior of a word. In most cases, it can be seen as affecting the stem prior to the addition of person- or voice-marking prefixes; in some cases, however, it affects some pre-stem material as well (cf. the table below, in which '+' signs separate affixes from the stem in the first column). In many, but not all, cases, internal reduplication may result from the simplification of external reduplication: impo-imponoosewa > impo-mponoosewa. (Some examples from Carlin 2004 support this hypothesis.)
| Base | Gloss | Reduplication | Gloss |
|---|---|---|---|
| im + ponoo + sewa | 'not telling it' (stem: pono(pï)) | i-mpo-mponoosewa | 'not telling it (despite many requests)' |
| wi + pahka | 'I hit/broke it' (stem: pahka) | wi-pah-pahka | 'I hit it several times' |
| s + et + ainka | 'I ran (away)' | se-tain-tainka | 'I kept running (away)' |
Finally, some cases are idiosyncratic and probably need to be listed independently (e.g., tëëkae 'bitten', 'bit', tëëkaakae 'bitten all over').
There are two general morphophonological processes that have important effects on the shapes of Tiriyó morphemes: syllable reduction and ablaut.
Syllable reduction is the process whereby the final syllable of certain morphemes (mostly stems, though also sometimes affixes) is changed depending on the shape of the following element. These morphemes will typically have:
The table below illustrates the various grades of the verb stems pono(pï) 'to tell O' and ona(mï) 'to bury, hide O'.
| Full (CV) Grade | Coda (C) Grade | Length (VV) Grade | Zero Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| wi-ponopï nkërë 'I still told O' | wi-ponoh-tae 'I will tell O' | wi-ponoo-ne 'I told O' | wi-pono 'I told O' |
| w-onamï nkërë 'I still hid O' | w-onan-tae 'I will hide O' w-onon-ne 'I hid O' w-onon 'I hid O' |
The reducing syllable can be the final one (pono(pï) 'to tell O', ona(mï) 'to bury/hide O'), or the initial one ((pï)tai 'shoes', mïta 'mouth'). The full form occurs when the following material (affix, stem, clitic) has a consonant cluster, i.e. is CCV-initial (the first consonant resyllabifies as the coda of the reducing syllable), or then starts with r. The reduced forms occur when this is not the case: the coda grade when a possible cluster - mp, nt, nk, ns, hp, hk, ht - results, and the length grade in the other cases (the zero grade for verb stems, when no clitics follow). Reducing syllables generally consist of a stop or nasal and the vowels ï or u (pï, pu, tï, tu..., mï, mu,...); rï and ru syllables can also reduce, but with some irregularities; wï syllables only reduce stem-initially (and apparently never have a coda grade).
Historically, syllable reduction results from the weakening and loss of the high vowels ï and u, leading to the formation of consonant clusters, in which the first element typically 'debuccalizes' to a glottal element (h or ʔ) and later disappears, causing (when possible) the compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel (cf. Gildea 1995). Comparative evidence suggests that many, perhaps all, morpheme-internal clusters in the Cariban family were formed as a result of this process.
In Tiriyó, as in most Cariban languages, there is a class of stems which has two forms in different morphosyntactic environments: a form which is e-initial (the e- or front grade) and a form which is ë-initial (the ë- or back grade). With nouns, for instance, the back grade occurs with the inclusive (1+2) prefix k-, the third-person coreferential ('reflexive') prefix t-, and with the non-possessed form (prefixless); all other person-marked forms have the front grade.
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| 1 | j-enu | 'my eye(s)' | Non-poss | ënu | 'eye(s)' (in general) | ||
| 2 | ë-enu | 'your eye(s)' | 1+2 | k-ënu | 'our eye(s)' | ||
| 3 | enu | 'his/her eye(s)' | 3coref | t-ënu | 'his/her own eye(s)' | ||
Tiriyó morphology is in most respects typical of the Cariban family, and comparable in degree of complexity to Romance or Slavic languages (though less prominently fusional than these latter families).