Canichana language

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (October 2019) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,011 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:Idioma canichana]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|es|Idioma canichana}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Canichana
Joaquiniano
Native to	Bolivia
Region	Beni Department
Ethnicity	Canichana people
Extinct	by 2000
Language family	Tequiraca–Canichana? Canichana
Official status
Official language in	Bolivia
Language codes
ISO 639-3	caz
Glottolog	cani1243
ELP	Canichana
Historical distribution of the language

Canichana, or Canesi, Joaquiniano, is a possible language isolate of Bolivia (department of Beni). In 1991 there were 500 Canichana people, but only 20 spoke the Canichana language; by 2000 the ethnic population was 583, but the language had no L1 speakers left.

It was spoken on the Mamoré River and Machupo River.^[1]

The Canichana territory is part of the region historically known as Moxos (or Mojos), which covers approximately 200,000 square kilometers of what is now the department of Beni. According to data provided in Crevels and Muysken (2009:15), based on the 2001 Census, the Canichana population at that time amounted to 404 members. During the research conducted by Crevels between 1999 and 2001, the author could only find three elders who still remembered some single words and phrases in Kanichana. Regarding the ethnic group, Crevels notes that the Canichanas are mainly engaged in agriculture, with their main agricultural products being cassava, corn, rice, beans and plantains. Part of the harvest is for self-consumption and the other part for local sale. Hunting, fishing and gathering are complementary traditional activities, in addition to the sale of their labor as laborers on the ranches.

Despite tentative proposals to classify the language, it is generally considered a language isolate or an unclassified language.^[2][3][4]

Canichana vowels^[2]

	Front	Mid	Back
High	i		u
Central	e		o
Low		a

Canichana consonants

		Bilabial		Alveolar		Postalveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
		voiceless	voiced	voiceless	voiced	voiceless	voiced	voiceless	voiced	voiceless	voiced	voiceless	voiced
Plosives	Simple	p	b	t	d					k	g	ʔ
	Ejective	(p')		(t')						(k')
Affricates	Simple			t͡s		t͡ʃ
	Ejective					(t͡ʃ')
Fricatives	Simple			s		ʃ						h
	Lateral
Nasals			m		n
Lateral					l				ʎ
Liquids					r
Semivowels			w						j

As far as nominal morphology is concerned, non-human nouns seem to carry the suffix -ni, which probably indicates the non-possessed form of the noun. For example, the nouns ni-chi 'smoke', ni-chuku 'fire', and ni-platsu 'flower'. Some adjectives also carry the prefix -ni, e.g. ni'-tatila 'canine', nĩ'-bla'su 'boy, small'. Nouns not bearing this prefix are those referring to kinship terms and body parts, which are always inalienable nouns bearing a personal prefix; for example: the nouns eu-tana 'my mother' and eu-nimara 'my heart'. As far as number is concerned, the plural is expressed by the suffix -na, e.g. santo-na 'saints'.

As for verbal morphology, it can only be noted that the main arguments S and A of the first and second person are obligatorily marked in the verb. The personal prefixes S/A seem to be derived from the free personal pronouns and can also appear in nouns as possessive markers, as observed in (1).

As for the negation, it seems that this is not marked in the predicate but is only expressed through the negative particle nihuas, which is placed before the predicate, as observed in (2):^[2]

As in neighboring languages, it seems that the only obligatory element in the Canichana clause is the predicate, which generally precedes the subject and complements, as seen in (3):

Interrogative pronouns always appear in the initial position of the phrase, as seen in (4):

In the noun phrase, the adjectives follow the core noun, as seen in (5):^[2]

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Mochica language due to contact.^[5]

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Canichana.^[1]

gloss	Canichana
one	mereka
two	kadita
three	kaʔarxata
tooth	eu-kuti
tongue	au-cháva
hand	eu-tixle
woman	ikegahui
water	nese
fire	nichuku
moon	nimilaku
maize	ni-chuxú
jaguar	ni-xolani
house	ni-tikoxle

• Llanos de Moxos (archaeology)

• Alain Fabre, 2005, Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos: KANICHANA.[1]
• de Créqui-Montfort, G.; Rivet, P. (1913). Linguistique Bolivienne: La Langue Kaničana. Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, 18:354-377.

• (in French) La Langue Kaničana
• Lenguas de Bolivia Archived 2019-09-04 at the Wayback Machine (online edition)
• Canichana transcriptions of GlobalRecordings audio files