User:Camilla.zecker/sandbox2

Note to Professor Kalin and others: underlined portions are taken from the existing Kulina language page, which was sparse (lead, history, classification, and phoneme charts).

'My contributions are the non-underlined portions. I plan to replace the existing phoneme charts with my own, so the ones reflected here are my own. < > mark existing sentences that I deleted. I also plan to replace the info box with my info box (it's more complete).'

Kulina (also Kulína, Kulyna, Culina, Curina, Corina, Korina, Culina-Madijá, Madijá, Madija, Madiha, Madihá) is an Arawan language of Brazil and Peru spoken by about 5,9000 Kulina people. < > Kulina is classified as a 'threatened' language with a status of '6b'–this means that the Kulina still use the language for face-to-face communication across all age groups, but it is losing users. A number of Kulina know how to read and write in Kulina, but not in Portuguese, so most are therefore functionally illiterate. There are seven known villages that speak Kulina in Brazil and another seven villages in Peru. Most of these villages are situated on or near rivers because the traditional Kulina village economy is based on fishing, hunting, and slash-and-burn agriculture.

Vowels
Kulina has four main vowel phonemes /a/, /e/, /i/, and /o/. Kulina has a mixture of front, central, back, high, mid, and low vowels. The following table shows these in IPA. The /o/ vowel's pronunciation varies between [u̜] and [o̜]. Vowels in Kulina are often nasalised in word-final position after /h/. Kulina has six phonetic diphthongs, [ai̯], [ɛi̯], [oi̯], [au̯], [ɛu̯], and [iu̯].

An [a] sound can also range to a [ɨ] sound. The [u] vowel sound only appears in diphthongs.

Consonants
Kulina has sixteen consonant phonemes. They are shown in the table below alongside their form in IPA in brackets. Consonants sounds /pʰ, t̪, d͡z, t͡s, t͡sʰ, ɾ, β~w/ may also be pronounced as /ɸ~f, t͡ʃ, z~ɟ, s, sʰ~ʃ, l, v/.

Syllable Structure
Kulina uses a (C)V(V) syllable structure. The last vowel slot is either empty or filled with /i/ or /o/, while the middle vowel slot can be any of the four vowel phonemes so long as the two vowels are distinct. The consonant slot also has the option of being empty if it is not filled by any of the sixteen consonant phonemes. The only consonant-vowel combination that is strictly prohibited is /w/ occurring before /o/. All other combinations are attested. The CV-syllables are the most common type and can be in any part of a morpheme. V-syllables usually occur in morpheme-initial position. CVV-syllables are less common and only occur in morpheme-final position. The following table shows where different syllable structures are likely to occur. Examples:


 * 'amonehe' → 'a-mo-ne-he' (V-CV-CV-CV)
 * We see V, and CV syllables here in morpheme-initial, and morpheme-internal/final positions, respectively.
 * 'imai' → 'i-mai' (V-CVV)
 * We see V and CVV syllables here, in morpheme-initial, and morpheme-final positions, respectively. Note that CVV is only allowed because the second vowel slot is filled with /i/ (the second vowel slot must be filled with either /i/ or /o/).

In Kulina, nouns and adjectives always have at least two syllables. While verbs can be monosyllabic, if a verb is inflecting it usually has at least one affix and is thus polysyllabic.

Stress
Kulina has predictable stress, where the primary stress usually falls on the last syllable. In the following examples, the start of the stressed syllable is indicated by an apostrophe and the syllable is bolded.

Examples:

botani [bota 'ni] 'stingray'

ima [i 'ma] 'story'

shikata [tshika 'ta] 'sour'

Affixation
Kulina has both verbal prefixes and suffixes. If there are two or more affixes on a verb, they will occur in a predictable order. Many Kulina suffixes have a masculine and feminine form.

Example:

withi-za-hari

sit-in-NAR.m

'He is sitting inside (a hut).'

In this example, 'withi' is the root morpheme, meaning 'sit.' The second morpheme, 'za,' is a directional suffix and is a directional preposition to show sitting 'in' something. The final morpheme 'hari' is a suffix that indicates that the narrative (NAR) is that of a male. If the statement were about a woman sitting in the hut, the female version of the suffix, 'haro,' would be used instead.

Example:

In this example, -zati is a past tense verbal suffix that indicates the recent past. There are two other past tense verbal suffixes: -pa and -de, that indicate the hodiernal past and prehodiernal past, respectively.

Reduplication
In Kulina, partial stem reduplication of the final syllable of the verb stem can occur to express the dual of the direct object, only when the verb stem has at least two syllables. When the verb stem has only one syllable, the stem vowel is triplicated to indicate the object dual.

Examples:

takara dama-ma o-na-na

chicken grab-DL 1SG-AUX-IFUT

'I'm going to grab two chickens.'

zomahi ehedeni kha-aa i-na-i

jaguar child bite.dead-DL 3-AUX-DECL.m

'The jaguar killed two children.'

Suppletion
Some verbs in Kulina have suppletive stems. If the verb is intransitive, the stem indicates the subject number, otherwise it indicates the direct object number. These verbs with suppletive stems are called suppletive verbs and have different forms for singular and non-singular usage. In some cases there is a third form for the dual. In summary, there are different forms of the verb to indicate if the subject is singular or non-singular (for transitive verbs). The table below lists the transitive verbs in Kulina that have suppletive stems.

Subject Person Agreement
Kulina distinguishes four persons: first person singular, first person non-singular, second person, and third person. The following table summarizes the prefixes used to distinguish between the four persons.

Noun Class Agreement
The noun class prefix ka- cross-references on the verb for some Kulina nouns. If ka- is preceded by another prefix, it becomes wa-. While some verbs in Kulina can drop their initial vowel to take a prefix, if the verb is taking the prefix ka-, an epenthetic /k/ is inserted after ka- and before the initial vowel, which is then preserved.

Example:

Gender Agreement
Intransitive verbs in Kulina always agree with the gender of their subject while transitive verbs can agree with the gender of either the subject or the direct object, following a set of complex rules. If a verb has a suffix that does not have distinct feminine and masculine forms, it will not indicate gender.

Examples: makhidehe Ø-zokhe-i

man 3-die-DECL.m

'The man died.'amonehe Ø-zokhe-ni

woman 3-die-DECL.f

'The woman died.'

Reduplication
Kulina makes use of reduplication to derive agent nouns from verbs. The first syllable of the verb is reduplicated and the suffix -de is added. Below are a few examples.

Gender Agreement
Kulina has gender marking on most possessed nouns. The feminine forms are marked with the suffix -ni at the base of the noun. Forming the masculine forms is more complex. If the noun ends in -ri, the noun is not gender-marked. If the noun does not end in -ri, there are two ways to mark masculine gender. The first is too use the suffix -ne and the second is to raise the stem-final /a/ to /e/. This information is summarized in the table below.

Word Order
Kulina has a basic constituent order of SOV, and SV when there is no direct object. Below are two examples of this word order. S {} O V {}

o-kha amonehe hihipa hia imai

1SG-ASS woman food make.warm 3-AUX-UP-DECL.m

'My wife is reheating the food.'

S O V {}

makhidehe poroko ethe to-ha-i

man pig raise 3-AUX-DECL.m

'The man raises pigs.'