Canichana language

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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]

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.

Wiktionary has a word list at Appendix:Canichana word list

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

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