Wanano language

Guanano (Wanano), or Piratapuyo, is a Tucanoan language spoken in the northwest part of Amazonas in Brazil and in Vaupés in Colombia. It is spoken by two peoples, the and the Piratapuyo. They do not intermarry, but their speech is 75% lexically similar.

Classification
Wanano is a member of the Tucanoan language family, which is found in northwest Amazonia. The Tukanoan family can be sub-categorized into two groups: Western Tukanoan Languages and Eastern Tucanoan Languages, Wanano belonging to the Eastern Tucanoan family. The Eastern Tukanoan group is much larger than the Western Tukanoan family with 16 languages and around 28,000 speakers, while the Western Tucanoan family has 4 languages with around 3,000 speakers.

Wanano/Piratapuyo belongs to the Northern branch of the Eastern Tucanoan languages, along with Tucano.

Geographic Distribution
The Wanano people live in northwestern Amazonia, on the Vaupés River. The diaspora of the Wanano people is spread between Brazil and Colombia, the total population is estimated at 1560, however the population in Brazil is estimated at 447. The number of speakers is quite high, it is still the first language of most of the population. It is seen as a healthy indigenous language.

Early history
The Jesuits were the first ones to make their way into the area that is inhabited by the Wanano people today. In the late 1700s they established their base in São Gabriel da Cachoeira. Missionary expeditions along with resettlement continued throughout the 1900s. Boarding schools were set up in larger settlements like São Gabriel and students were sent to study there. People from these missionaries would go into villages and encourage the indigenous peoples to abandon their beliefs and practice Christianity, along with speaking Portuguese.

The first documentation of Wanano people came from naturalist Alfred Wallace during his 1852 expedition along the Vaupés River. Later in 1904, a German ethnologist Theodor Kock-Grünberg conducted research in the Wanano region. He observed their interactions with other indigenous groups, including ceremonies that included dance and burial practices. Something that has been noted by Stenzel in her research that is an important detail to include is the Wanano people are very multilingual.

Wanano Language Documentation Projects
The first known work on the Wanano language was a grammatical outline recorded by a Salesian missionary named Antônio Giacone in 1967. Since then a lot of work has been conducted by Nathan and Carolyn Waltz who have worked with the SIL organization in Colombia from 1963 to 1996. They have published a pedagogical grammar (Waltz 1976), papers on the aspects of Wanano phonology (Waltz and Waltz 1967, Waltz 1982, Waltz 2002), a volume containing a study of Wanano kinship terms, a grammatical sketch of the language and a long interlinearized text (Waltz and Waltz 1997) and the grammatical overview of Wanano found in the Caro y Cuervo collection (Waltz and Waltz 2000). In 2007, Nathan Waltz published a Wanano – Spanish dictionary (Waltz 2007). More research has been done on the Wanano language by Dr. Kristine Stenzel who has been conducting research in the Upper Rio Negro area since 2000. She has published a book on the grammar of Kotiria (Wanano) that discusses the morphology and syntax of the language (Stenzel 2015). Along with this book she has written many articles about different aspects of the Wanano language and people (Stenzel 2005a, 2005b, 2006, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c, 2010, 2012, 2014) (Stenzel 2015).

Wanano was described in a language documentation project funded by Programa de Documentação de Línguas e Culturas Indígenas (ProDocLin) at the Museu do Índio. The project was coordinated by Dr. Kristine Stenzel and was a teaching workshop of Kotiria pedagogical grammar (Saltarelli 2014).

Dr. Kristine Stenzel has also written articles regarding anthropological aspects of the Wanano people (2010, 2013) as well in her 2004 dissertation where she discusses cultural aspects such as marriage and multilingualism. Anthropologist Janet Chernela has also studied the Wanano society and published a book called “The Wanano Indians of the Brazilian Amazon” which takes a deeper look into Wanano society.

Consonants
Nasalization is carried on vowels. Voiced plosives and may surface as the nasal consonants, , , and  in the environment of nasal vowels.

Suprasegmental Elements
Syllables may be marked with either a high or low stress accent. Nasalization is suprasegmental and moves from left to right through a word.

Morphology
Wanano is a nominative accusative language with an SOV sentence structure that contains the following grammatical categories: nouns, verbs, particles, pronouns, and interrogatives. These are outlined in Stenzel’s Reference Grammar of Wanano (2004). Under nouns Stenzel goes into further detail regarding the animates: human vs non-human animates and inanimates: mass nouns vs count nouns (xi). Stenzel discusses the pronouns which will be examined further below. For verbs Wanano have suffix morphemes that indicate evidentiality, as well as imperative, interrogative and irregular morphemes. While there are adverbial morphemes in Wanano, there are no adjectives.

Pronouns
Pronouns in Wanano are categorized by personal, possessive, interrogative and demonstrative. A like English, gender is seen in 3rd person pronouns only. The pronouns are categorized into deictic for 1st and 2nd person and anaphoric for 3rd person.

Personal Pronouns
ti-ro yoa-ro-pʉ wa’a-ra

ANPH-SG be.long-PART-LOC go-VIS.PERF.NON.1

He went far away.

Possessive Pronouns
yʉ phʉ-kʉ

1SG parent-MASC

my father

Interrogative Pronouns
~doa hi-hari ti-ko-ro

who INT.IMPERF ANPH-FEM-SG

Who is she?

Demonstrative Pronouns
a’ri-ro

DEM:PROX-SG

This man si-ro

DEM:PROX-SG

That man ~o-i

DEIC:PROX-LOC

Here ~so’o-pʉ

DEIC:DIST-LOC

There (distal) to-pʉ

REM-LOC

There (remote) pa-iro

other-NOM:SG

another one

Other Morphological Aspects of Wanano
Gender coding of nouns is a morphological aspect discussed in the grammar of Wanano. Nouns with human referents are obligatorily marked for gender, most noun roots with human referents are masculine, otherwise feminine if marked by morpho-phonological means. The gender coding suffix -ko that appears at the end of the noun is feminine while  -kʉ is masculine, for example phʉ-ko-ro (mother) and phʉ-kʉ-ro (father). Sometimes these endings can be reduced to o for feminine and ʉ for masculine. Examples of this are ~ducho-ro (grandmother) and ~duchʉ-ro (grandfather).

A mass noun is a noun that has no plural form, not meaning singular but that it is an uncountable referent. For example, you cannot count water however you can weigh it to measure its mass. By adding the morpheme –ro to the root of a mass noun or verb in Wanano, it changes into a count noun. Some examples of this are: ko (water) is turned into ko-ro (rainstorm) by adding –ro; tha (grass) is turned into tha-ro (field).

Syntax
Wanano is a nominative-accusative case system, this means that the subject of the transitive and intransitive verbs are marked the same way.

Intransitive
Intransitive verbs are verbs that require a single nominal argument. Below are some examples.

yʉ’ʉ hi-ha ko-iro

1SG COP-VIS.IMPERF.1 relative-NOM:SG

I am your/a relative. ~dubi-a da’ra wa’a-ra wese-pʉ

woman-PL work go-VIS.IMPERF.NON.1 garden-LOC

Women go to work in the garden. to ~badu-ro pase-pʉ wa’a-a

3SG.POSS husband-SG far.away.-LOC go-ASSERT.PERF

Her husband left.

Transitive
Transitive verbs are verbs that require two core nominal arguments.

a’ri thu-re hoa-ha ~sa kooti-ri-a

DEM:PROX CLS:stacked-OBJ write-VIS.IMPERF.1 1PL:EXC Wanano-NOM-PL

We Wananos are writing this book. ti-ro tia-ro ka-ya-re ~waha-a

ANPH-SG three-PART black.monkey-PL-OBJ kill-ASSERT.PERF

He killed three monkeys. ti-ro ~yabi-re ~tidi-ra

ANPH-SG night-TMP walk-VIS.IMPERF.NON.1

A firefly comes out at night. ti-ro ~da-ra ti-re ti-~phi-re wese-pʉ-re

ANPH-SG bring/take-VIS.IMPERF.NON.1 ANPH-CLS:generic ANPH-CLS:bladelike-OBJ garden-LOC-OBJ

He always takes the machete to the garden. ~bʉ’ʉ yahiri~pho’da-re yʉ’ʉ-re wa-ga

2SG(POSS) heart-OBJ 1SG-OBJ give-IMPER

Give me your heart. to ~ba-kʉ-ro-~ka-re ~da-wʉa-rʉka-ga

3SG.POSS child-MASC-SG-DIM.-OBJ bring/take-pick.up-INCEP-ASSERT.PERF

She picked up her little boy

As we can see from the examples above, Wanano is a nominative accusative language. For example, in example 1, 1SG yʉˈʉ is the same as in example 8. In example 9, the 3SG to is the same as in example 3. As well as in example 6 ANPH-SG ti is the same as in example 5.

Transitive motion verbs
Transitive motion verbs frequently occur with adjunct expressions coded only by the locative -pʉ and there are certain motion verbs in Wanano which can be syntactically transitive. In other words, they take a second, oblique argument coded by -pʉ-re.

~ayo ~o-pʉ-re yʉ’ʉ kho’a-wi’i-kʉ-ka

so/then DEIC:PROX-LOC-OBJ 1SG return-COMPL-NON.3.MASC-PREDICT.

That’s how I’ll get back here. ku’tu-~ka-pʉ-re phi’a-sʉ-’a

clearing-DIM-LOC-OBJ MOV.out.into-COMPL-ASSERT.PERF

(He) went out into a little clearing.

Wanano is typologically nominative-accusative, and that it codes the grammatical rather than the semantic roles of core arguments.

Plural morphemes in Wanano
The most common plural morpheme used in Wanano is -a/ ̴da. The alternation between the two is still unclear however there is a tendency for ̴da to be used for animates with human referents, for example pho’da (children), while –a is used for other animates. When pluralizing male or females the morphemes - ̴sʉba (male) and ̴sa ̴dubia (female) are used. Some examples of this are:

For pluralizing animals, since they are non-human the morpheme –a is used. There are some exceptions where –ya is used. Some examples of this are:

~phido-ro → ~phido-a

snake {} snake-PL bora-ro → boraro-a

curupira {} curupira-PL ~die-ro → ~die-ya

dog {} dogs

If you take the word for dogs, for example, die-ya, and you want to say female dogs, you add the word for women ( ̴dubia).

Dieya- ~dubia

dogs females

Female dogs.