User:Jesus051/Sanumá language

For other uses, see Samata (disambiguation) and Sanima (disambiguation).

Sanumá
Kohoroxitari
Sanɨma
Pronunciation	[ˈsɑnɨmɑ]
Native to	Venezuela, Brazil
Ethnicity	Sanumá
Native speakers	5,100 (2000–2006)
Language family	Yanomaman Sanumá
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xsu
Glottolog	sanu1240
Yanomaman languages location   Yanomamö   Ninam   Yanomám   Sanumá   Ỹaroamë

The Sanumá language is one of the four languages that are known as the main members of the Yonomaman linguistic family. The rest of these languages are: Yanomami, Yanomam, and Yanam. All the languages and dialects of the Yanomami family share some general structural characteristics. The degree of mutual intelligibility varies among these four languages. Sanuma and Yanomam appear to be the farthest apart. Sanuma is spoken by the Venezuelan and Brazilian people that live on the watershed of the Orinoco-Amazon basins, on the Parima Range, both in Venezuela and in Brazil. It is also known as Sanema, Sanima, Tsanuma, Guaika, Samatari, Samatali, Xamatari and Chirichano. There are about 5,100 speakers. As a result, it is currently a threatened language at risk of extinction. In terms of the distribution of the Sanuma language, most of its speakers are in Venezuela and they also speak Ye'kuana, also known as Maquiritare, the language of the Ye'kuana people.

Classification

It is one of the four main members of the Yonomaman linguistic family. It is currently a threatened language due to the low number of speakers, with only about 5,100 speakers worldwide.

Sanumá is an isolating language.

History and Society

Throughout the centuries, the Yanomami, originally from the Parima range, have spread up toward river valleys on the plains both to the south in Brazil, and to the north in Venezuela. The Sanumá speak one of the four know Yanomami languages. It is in the rainforests of north Brazil and south Venezuela that the groups have lived undisturbed until recently. In the last 40 years or so the western world has been knocking at their doorsteps wanting lumber and gold. Unlike most other Yanoama tribes, the Sanumá, at least those in the upper Auaris river valley, do not live in round houses; instead, they live in rectangular structures, one to four per village, divided into several compartments, each occupied by a nuclear or extended family.

Although horticulture provides most of their daily food, their economy has been heavily reliant on hunting and gathering. Their economic activities are essentially the same as those of the other Yanoama groups. Activities such as subsistence farming of manioc, bananas, tobacco, and sorne roots, hunting, gathering, and fish poisoning during the dry season. The population of Sanumá villages ranges from 30 to 50 people on average. The local group of coresident relatives (which includes both consanguineal kinsmen and affines) has been the largest corporate unit in terms of subsistence activities, ceremonials, and defense and attack in warfare. A village's population is frequently made up of two sets of opposite-sex siblings. In an ideal world, these sets of siblings, as well as the children of opposite-sex siblings, would marry, but demographic factors frequently prevent village endogamy.

They have had a culture that is devoid of institutionalized forms of hierarchy, except for the headman's position, which can be passed down patrilineally. The rich symbolic dichotomies found in other areas of the tropical forests are not present in the gender division of labor. The Sanumá can be described as a primitive, egalitarian people. The Yanomami and Sanumá are not a "closed" population, despite being the most geographically and historically isolated major aboriginal population in South America's tropical forests. They have maintained both trade and antagonistic relations with the Arawakan and Cariban groups on their perimeters.

The Sanumá are an example of the use of patrilineality as a native ideology, manifested in classifications and modes of internal social differentiation without corporate implications. The Sanuma corporate groups are made up of family groups and villages as residential units that either share property or band for joint action, especially for attack or defense.

Despite the overwhelming pressures that many of them have faced from massive invasions since the 1970s, they have managed to keep much of their traditions. The mutual intelligibility of the four Yanomami languages varies depending on their distance from each other. Yanomam and Yanomami are the closest, while Sanumá and Yanam are the farthest. Language differences are largely responsible for significant sociocultural differences. However, there is an undeniable family resemblance that allows them to be identified as a single ethnic group, which people have agreed to call Yanomami.

The Sanumá also divide their relatives into kin and affines, in what can be recognized as a two-section system. The Sanumá named social units other than the community. They have group membership transmitted through agnatic kin. The grandparents and grandchildren are terminologically equated with kin. Also pater is more important than genitor. There is also significant kin solidarity present as well. There is transitivity of kin term usage and distant classificatory kin remain kin. There are incest beliefs prototypically with kin and kin drink bone ashes. There is no special name secrecy for the dead and the  ideology of conception is consistent with agnation.

The Sanumá society is divided into several named, exagamous, patrilineal sibs and lineages. The kinship idiom is applied to these social units, so that each sib and lineage has a kinship or an affinal relationship with other sibs and lineages. Marriages are expected to follow along these lines, i.e., to occur between social units that have an affinal relationship and to avoid occurring between those that are kin to each other. However, "wrong marriages" occur frequently enough to distort the kin-affine terminological distinction and cause terminology to be adjusted to fit new arrangements. Marriage with a cross-cousin, whether matrilateral, patrilateral, or bilateral, is ideal because it automatically respects the rule of kin-group exogamy. Lineage and sib exogamy is observed when marriage occurs between other categories of relatives, i.e. when the rules of the two-section system are not followed.

The traditional method of naming someone is through a ritual hunt conducted by the father of the newborn child in order to kill an animal that may become the child's eponym. When this naming technique fails, resulting in the child not receiving the name of an animal species, alternative types of names can be used. In fact, these are the majority of the personal names in use among the Sanumá. An individual has at least one patronym in addition to his personal name, based on his affiliation in one or more kin units- sibs and lineages. When questioned, the Sanumá can tell the difference between personal names and patronyms by referring to a person's personal name as tamat de hiZo sai ("his/her real name"). Patronyms are not considered one's "real" name, but rather "other, additional names" (hilo setea, hiZo nayo). Patronyms, as the term implies, are always passed down from father to children of both sexes.

Geographic distribution

Official status

The majority of Yanomami speak only their native languages. Approximately 59 percent of the total Yanomami population speaks Yanomami (mostly in Venezuela), 21 percent Yanomae (almost entirely in Brazil), 17 percent Sanumá (mostly in Venezuela), and only 3 percent Yanam/Ninam (mainly in Brazil). Thus, the Sanumá language is spoken in both Brazil and Venezuela, with the larger portion being spoken in Venezuela. Sanuma is spoken in Venezuela near the Caura and Ervato-Ventuari rivers, and in Brazil near the Auari river and the Roraima region.

Dialects/Varieties

Some linguists identify dialects such as Yanoma, Cobari, Caura, and Ervato-Ventuari in Venezuela and Auaris in Brazil. All the dialects are mutually intelligible. In Venezuela, Sanumá is spoken in the vicinity of the Caura and Ervato-Ventuari Rivers in Venezuela, while in Brazil, it is spoken in the Auari River region of Roraima.

There are three dialects spoken in Roraima, Brazil:

• Awaris (2,955 speakers)
• Aracaçá (29 speakers)
• Hokomawä (180 speakers)

Derived languages

There are no languages descended from Sanumá because it is on the verge of extinction. Only those belonging to the same linguistic family share similar general structural characteristics. The Yanomami, Yanomam, and Yanam are all Yanomami tribes. They also speak in a similar dialect. There is no conclusive genetic affiliation with neighboring languages or major linguistic groups.

Sounds/Phonology

Although a few consonant clusters (/pr/, /kr/, /hr/ or /fr/, /mr/) occur in Yanomami, Yanomae, and less commonly Yanam, the canonical syllable structure is (C)V. However, Sanumà has no consonant clusters, with the exception of ideophones /pi/ and /kl/. The phonological word's penultimate vowel receives primary emphasis. Words spoken alone have pause boundaries and can be used to form sentences. While nouns may exist as phonological words and pause classes on their own, verbs cannot and must depend on pronouns and suffixes..

Grammar

The documentation for this languages is still in progress, and grammatical details are incomplete.

Morphology

The Sanumá language does in fact (Yanomami family) have four pronouns that refer to: the speaker (first singular); the addressee (second singular); the speaker and at least one other person who is not the addressee (first plural exclusive); and the addressee and at least one other person who can include the speaker (combining second plural and first plural inclusive, from more familiar systems). 'First-plus-second person' is grouped with second person in this context, whereas it is not in most other languages. The Yanomami languages are suffixing, with a complex agglutinative verbal morphology. In the Yanomami family of languages, there is strong evidence of arbitrary and iconic reduplication. De-verbalization is the only type of arbitrary reduplication discovered.

Syntax

In the Sanumá language, the basic word order is SOV, and agents and instruments have ergative case marking. Nouns and verbs are the two most basic open word classes; stative verbs convey adjectival meanings. Pronouns and a large number of particles are among the other word classes.

Examples

na-ta=na-ta-mo

wake.up-EXT- VBLZR

‘keep (constantly) waking up’

opa=opa-mo

stand=stand-VBLZR ‘stand around’

ua.ua-mo

cry.IDEO-VBLZR ‘keep crying’

These examples suggest that reduplication gives the actions expressed by intransitive verbs a sense of iterativity, distributivity, and durativity.

By consanguinity:

“Father = Hawa

“Mother” = nawa

“Older sibling of same sex” = hebala

“Younger sibling of same sex” = hoosa

“Sibling of opposite sex” = sawa

“Son” = ulu

“Daughter” = thewi

By affinity

“Uncle,” “father-in-law” = soaze a, pishi a

“Aunt,” “mother-in-law” = saaze a, pizisa

“Brother-in-law” = soli

“Wife” = hiziba

“Husband” = hean o

“Nephew” , “niece”, “daughter-in-law” = hizagiba (men speaking)

“Son-in-law” = suha

“Nephew” = sizo (women speaking)

“Niece” = sizomi (women speaking)

Bibliography

• C. DERBYSHIRE, DESMOND (1987). "MORPHOSYNTACTIC AREAL CHARACTERISTICS OF AMAZONIAN LANGUAGES'". INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS.
• Ramos, Albert, Alcida, Bruce (1977). YANOAMA DESCENT AND THE SANUMA 1YANOMAM AFFINITY: CONTRAST (PDF). Horizon Documentation. ISBN 2-902715-00-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Goodwin Gomez, Gale (2014). Reduplication in Indigenous Languages of South America (PDF). Brill. pp. 21–38. ISBN 9789004272415.
• Ramos, Alcida Rita (c. 1995). Sanumá memories: Yanomami ethnography in times of crisis. Madison, Wis.
• Ramos, Alcida Rita (2001). OLD ETHICS DIE HARD THE YANOMAMI AND SCIENTIFIC WRITING (PDF) (Issue 302 ed.). Departamento de Antropologia, Universidade de Brasília.
• Ramos, Alcida R. (1974). "How the Sanumá Acquire Their Names". Ethnology. 13 (2).
• Rifkin, Jeffrey (November 1994). "ETHNOGRAPHY AND ETHNOCIDE: A CASE STUDY OF THE YANOMAMI". Dialectical Anthropology. 19.
• Aikhenvald, Dixon, Alexandra, R.M.W (March 1998). "Dependencies between Grammatical Systems". Linguistic Society of America. 74: 56–80.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Ramos, Alcida Rita (1996). "Yanomami and Gender: Toward a Sanuma Theory of Knowledge" (PDF). SÉRIE ANTROPOLOGIA.
• Ramos, Alcida Rita (1979). "Rumor: The ideology of an Inter-tribal Situation" (PDF). Antropologica: 1–25.

Further reading

• Alcida Ramos, Sanuma Memories: Yanomami Ethnography in Times of Crisis (University of Wisconsin Press, 1995)
• Bruce Parry, Tribe: Adventures in a Changing World (Michael Joseph Ltd, 2007)

Category:Yanomaman languages Category:Subject–object–verb languages Category:Isolating languages Category:Languages of Brazil Category:Languages of Venezuela