Tiriyó language

Infobox Language
name= Tiriyó / Trio
nativename = tarëno ijomi
pronunciation = [ta.ɽəː.no i.joː.mi]
familycolor= American
states= Brazil, Surinam
region= Northern Amazonia, Guianas Plateau
speakers= ~2,000 (in 2005)
fam1=Cariban
fam2=Taranoan
nation="none"
iso1="none"|iso2="none"|iso3= tri

The Tiriyó language is spoken by the Tiriyó (also known as Trio, autodenomination tarëno), approximately 2,000 people living in several villages on both sides of the Brazil-Surinam 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.

Classification

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.

Dialects

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.

Phonology

Tiriyó has 9 vowels and 7 consonants, as shown in the chart below. (Orthographic symbols in bold, IPA values in square brackets.)

Vowels

Syllable Structure and Phonotactics

The basic syllable template is (C₁)V₁(V₂)(C₂) -- i.e., the possible syllable types are:

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.)

References

*cite book |last=Carlin |first=Eithne |title=A Grammar of Trio: A Cariban Language of Suriname |publisher=Peter Lang (Europäischer Verlag der Wissenschaften) |location=Frankfurt am Main |year=2004
*cite journal|last=Gildea |first=Spike |title=A comparative description of syllable reduction in the Cariban language family| journal=International Journal of American Linguistics| volume=61 |pages=62–102 |date=1995 |doi=10.1086/466245
*cite book |last=Hayes |first=Bruce |title=Metrical stress theory |publisher=University of Chicago Press| location=Chicago| year=1995
*cite journal |last=Meira |first=Sérgio |title=Rhythmic stress in Tiriyó (Cariban) |journal=International Journal of American Linguistics |volume=64 |pages=352–378 |date=1998 |doi=10.1086/466366
*cite book |last=Meira |first=Sérgio |title=A reconstruction of Proto-Taranoan: Phonology and Morphology |publisher=LINCOM Europa |location=Munich |year=2000*cite book |last=Meira |first=Sérgio |title=A Grammar of Tiriyó |publisher=Mouton de Gruyter |location=Amsterdam, Philadelphia |year=to appear