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Ayoreo language

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Ayoreo
Native toParaguay, Bolivia
RegionChaco, Alto Paraguay departments (Paraguay); Santa Cruz Department (Bolivia)
EthnicityAyoreo people
Native speakers
4,700 (2012)[1]
Zamucoan
  • Ayoreo
Dialects
  • Tsiracua
Official status
Official language in
Bolivia
Language codes
ISO 639-3ayo
qro Guarañoca
Glottologayor1240  Ayoreo
zamu1245  Zamuco
ELPAyoreo

Ayoreo is a Zamucoan language spoken in both Paraguay and Bolivia. It is also known as Morotoco, Moro, Ayoweo, Ayoré, and Pyeta Yovai. However, the name "Ayoreo" is more common in Bolivia, and "Morotoco" in Paraguay. It is spoken by the Ayoreo people, an indigenous ethnic group traditionally living on a combined hunter-gatherer and farming lifestyle.

Classification

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Ayoreo is classified as a Zamucoan language, along with Chamacoco. Extinct Guarañoca may have been a dialect.

Geographic distribution

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Ayoreo is spoken in both Paraguay and Bolivia, with 3,100 speakers total, 1,700 of whom live in Paraguay and 1,400 in Bolivia. Within Paraguay, Ayoreo is spoken in the Chaco Department and the northern parts of the Alto Paraguay Department. In Bolivia, it is spoken in the Cordillera Province, in the Santa Cruz Department.

Phonology

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Bertinetto (2009) reports that Ayoreo has the 5 vowels /a, e, i, o, u/, which appear both as oral and nasal.[2]

Consonants
Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Plosive voiceless p t k ʔ
prenasal ᵐb ⁿd ᵑɡ
Affricate t͡ʃ
Fricative s h
Nasal voiceless m̥ n̥ ɲ̥
voiced m n ɲ ŋ
Approximant ɹ j w

/j/ can also be heard as [dʒ].[citation needed]

Grammar

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The prototypical constituent order is subject-verb-object, as seen in the following examples:[3]

Sérgio

Sérgio

ch-ingo

3-show

caratai

jaguar

aroi

skin

tome

to

Ramon.

Ramon

Sérgio ch-ingo caratai aroi tome Ramon.

Sérgio 3-show jaguar skin to Ramon

‘Sérgio showed the jaguar’s skin to Ramon’.

Enga

COORD

ore

3P

ch-ijnoque

3-carry

Víctor

Víctor

aja

towards

señóra

señora

Emília

Emília

i-guijnai.

house

Enga ore ch-ijnoque Víctor aja señóra Emília i-guijnai.

COORD 3P 3-carry Víctor towards señora Emília house

‘And they carried Víctor to Señora Emília’s house’.

Ayoreo is a fusional language.[2]

Verbs agree with their subjects, but there is no tense-inflection.[4][page needed] Consider the following paradigm, which has prefixes marking person and suffixes marking number:[5]

y-aca I plant
b-aca you plant
ch-aca he, she, they plant
y-aca-go we plant
uac-aca-y you (pl) plant

When the verb root contains a nasal, there are nasalized variants of the agreement affixes:

ñ-ojne I spread
m-ojne you spread
ch-ojne he, she, they spread
ñ-ojne-ngo we spread
uac-ojne-ño you (pl) spread

Ayoreo is a mood-prominent language.[2] Nouns can be divided into possessable and non-possessable; possessor agreement is expressed through a prefixation.[6][page needed] The syntax of Ayoreo is characterized by the presence of para-hypotactical structures.[7][page needed]

Notes

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  1. ^ Ayoreo at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. ^ a b c Bertinetto 2009[page needed]
  3. ^ Bertinetto 2009, pp. 45–46.
  4. ^ Ciucci 2007–2008.
  5. ^ Bertinetto 2009, p. 29.
  6. ^ Ciucci 2010.
  7. ^ Bertinetto & Ciucci 2012.

References

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  • Bertinetto, Pier Marco (2009). "Ayoreo (Zamuco). A grammatical sketch" (PDF). Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. 8.
  • Bertinetto, Pier Marco; Ciucci, Luca (2012). "Parataxis, Hypotaxis and Para-Hypotaxis in the Zamucoan Languages". Linguistic Discovery. 10 (1): 89–111. doi:10.1349/PS1.1537-0852.A.404.
  • Briggs, Janet R. (1972). Quiero contarles unos casos del Beni. Cochabamba: Summer Institute of Linguistics in collaboration with the Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, Dirección Nacional de Antropología.
  • Briggs, Janet R. (1973). "Ayoré narrative analysis". International Journal of American Linguistics. 39 (3): 155–163. doi:10.1086/465259.
  • Ciucci, Luca (2007–2008). "Indagini sulla morfologia verbale dell'ayoreo" (PDF). Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica della Scuola Normale (in Italian). 7.
  • Ciucci, Luca (2010). "La flessione possessiva dell'ayoreo" (PDF). Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (in Italian). 9 (2).
  • Higham, Alice; Morarie, Maxine; Paul, Greta (2000). Ayoré-English dictionary. Vol. 1–3. Sanford, FL: New Tribes Mission.
  • Sušnik, Branislava J. (1963). "La lengua de los Ayoweos - Moros". Boletín de la Sociedad Científica del Paraguay y del Museo Etnográfico. Etnolingüística. 8. Asunción: 1–148.
  • Sušnik, Branislava J. (1973). La lengua de los Ayoweo-Moros. Estructura gramatical y fraseario etnográfico (in Spanish). Asunción: Museo Etnográfico “Andrés Barbero”.
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