Gününa Küne language
| Gününa Küne | |
|---|---|
| Gennaken, Puelche | |
| Gününa Küne, Günün a yajüch | |
| Pronunciation | [gɨnɨna kɨnə] [gɨnɨn a jaxətʃ] |
| Native to | Argentina |
| Region | Río Negro |
| Ethnicity | Puelches, ?Chechehet |
| Extinct | 1934, with the death of Trruúlmani[1] 1960s–1970s[2] |
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | pue |
| Glottolog | puel1244 |
| ELP | Gününa-Küne |
 Map of the Gününa Küne language | |
| pwel "east" | |
|---|---|
| People | Gününa künä (Puelche) |
| Language | Gününa yajüch |
| Country | Pwelmapu |
Gününa Küne (Puelche) is an extinct language formerly spoken by the Gününa Küne people in the Pampas region of Argentina. The language is also known as Gennaken (Guenaken), Northern Tehuelche, Gününa Yajich, Ranquelche, and Pampa. It may also have been spoken by the Chechehet.[3]
Classification
[edit]
Gününa Küne has long been considered a language isolate. Based on very limited evidence, Viegas Barros (1992) suggested that Gününa Küne might be closely related to the Querandí language, one of the Het peoples, and Viegas Barros (2005) said that it is related to the Chon languages.[4] Further afield, inclusion in a putative Macro-Jibaro family has been posited.
Documentation
[edit]In 1829, D'Orbigny toured the area of southern Buenos Aires and the mouth of the Río Negro. There he collected words of the "puelches', "aucas' and "tehuelches' —that is, in günün a iajüch, mapuzungun and teushen, respectively—in the vicinity of Carmen de Patagones, in a permanent settlement of linguistically heterogeneous groups.
The French traveler, intrigued by the indigenous languages of the area, arrived at the tolderías and contacted some interpreters:
"In a tent of friendly Patagonians I found a woman named Lunareja who spoke enough Spanish as if to serve as an interpreter; belonged to the Puelche nation and was married to a Patagonian, so that I knew both languages equally, which was of the greatest use to me. I also knew Araucanian, but the notions of this language could be better transmitted to me by the Indians."
In L'Homme américain (de l'Amérique méridionale) he includes some comments on which highlights pronunciation features, the use of the morpheme ya- prefixed to the parts of the body, the numbering system or the absence of gender markings on adjectives, as well as a list of words that compares with those of other languages of South America. [5][6]
Studies of Gününa yajüch
[edit]In 1864, Hunziker recorded a vocabulary and a collection of phrases from a language called Genakenn in the Viedma region. In 1865, the explorer Jorge Claraz traveled from south of Buenos Aires to Chubut being guided by individuals who spoke Gününa iajëch, collecting the names of places, words and sentences in his Diario de viaje de exploración al Chubut (Chubut exploration travel diary) (1865–1866).
In 1913, Lehmann Nitsche used the data collected by Hunziker and Claraz to create a comparative vocabulary of Tehuelche languages: El grupo lingüístico tschon de los territorios magallánicos (The Chonan Linguistic Groups of the Magellanic Territories).
In 1925, Harrington gathered words from bilingual Tehuelche speakers which he published in 1946 in Contribución al estudio del indio gününa küne (A Contribution to the Study of the Gününa küne Indian), claiming that they called their language Gününa yájitch or Pampa. During the 1950s, Casamiquela collected vocabulary, songs and prayers from various elders, outlining a morphosyntactic analysis.
In 1960, Ana Gerzenstein made a phonetic and phonological classification in her Fonología de la lengua gününa-këna (Phonology of the Gününa-këna Language).
In 1991, José Pedro Viegas Barros outlined a morphosyntactic projection in Clarificación lingüística de las relaciones interculturales e interétnicas en la región pampeano-patagónica (Linguistic Clarification of Intercultural and Inter-ethnic Relations in the Pampas-Patagonian Region), and in 2005 he developed a phonological description in Voces en el viento[7][8] (Voices in the Wind).
Puelche is a dead language. Casamiquela released the first and last name of the last Puelche speaker: José María Cual, who died in 1960 at the age of 90.[9]
Phonology
[edit]Vowels
[edit]| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Unrounded | Rounded | |
| Close | i | ɯ | u |
| Close-mid | e | ɤ | o |
| Open-mid | ʌ | ||
| Open | a | ||
A short sounding /e/ is realized as [ɛ].
Consonants
[edit]Gününa Küne has 25 consonants:[10][11]
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ||||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | q | ʔ | ||
| ejective | pʼ | tʼ | kʼ | (qʼ) | ||||
| voiced | b | d | ɡ | |||||
| Affricate | voiceless | t͡s | t͡ʂ | t͡ʃ | ||||
| ejective | t͡sʼ | t͡ʂʼ | t͡ʃʼ | |||||
| Fricative | s | ʂ | ʃ | x | h | |||
| Lateral | voiceless | ɬ | ||||||
| voiced | l | ʎ | ||||||
| Rhotic | trill | r | ||||||
| tap | ɾ | |||||||
| Semivowel | j | w | ||||||
It is not clear if there is a uvular ejective stop [qʼ].
Vocabulary
[edit]Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Gennaken.[12]
gloss Gennaken one chéye two päch ear chütsk tooth xaye hand yapal foot yapgit sun apiúkük moon apioxok dog dáshü
Comparative vocabulary
[edit]- Below there is a list of comparative vocabulary between Chonan languages; Gününa Küne, Teushen, Selkʼnam, Tehuelche, and Haush, as well as Moseten languages; Chimane and Mosetén.[12][13][6]
| Chon | Mosetén | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| English | Gününa Küne | Teushen | Selkʼnam | Tehuelche | Haush | Chimane | Mosetén |
| one | chéye | cheuquen | sôs | chochieg | setaul | irit | irit |
| two | päch | xeukay | sôki | h'áuke | aim | pana | pára |
| three | gütʳsh | keash | sauke | ká'ash | shaucn | chibin | chibin |
| four | málǖ, mālǖ | kekaguy | koni-sôki | kague | tsis | ||
| five | tān’kǖ, tan’kü | keytzum | kismarei | k'tsáen | cánam | ||
| six | thrüman, tshüman | wenecash | kari-koni-soki | uaenecash | ebeuñ | ||
| seven | katʳshpetsh; katrshpitsh | kuka | kari-kísmarei | aiéké | yevetige | ||
| eight | pūúsha | wenekekague | karikei-konisoki | venik'cage | quencañ | ||
| nine | tsheyiba, tshiība | kekaxetzum | kauken-kísmarei | yamakeitzen | arajatec | ||
| ten | ts’amátskǚ | xaken | karai-kísmarei | kaken | tac | ||
Bibliography
[edit]- Casamiquela, Rodolfo M. (1983). Nociones de gramática del gününa küne. Paris: French National Centre for Scientific Research.
- Adelaar, Willem (2004). The Languages of the Andes. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-36275-7.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Gününa Küne at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Crevels, Mily (2012-01-13), Campbell, Lyle; Grondona, Verónica (eds.), "Language endangerment in South America: The clock is ticking", The Indigenous Languages of South America, De Gruyter, pp. 167–234, doi:10.1515/9783110258035.167, ISBN 978-3-11-025513-3, retrieved 2025-02-21
- ^ Campbell, L. (2024). "Phantom, False, and Spurious Languages of South America". The Indigenous Languages of the Americas: History and Classification. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-767346-1. Retrieved 2025-03-01.
- ^ Campbell, Lyle (2012). "Classification of the indigenous languages of South America". In Grondona, Verónica; Campbell, Lyle (eds.). The Indigenous Languages of South America. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 2. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 59–166. ISBN 9783110255133.
- ^ d'Orbigny., Alcide Dessalines (1923). L'Homme américain (de l'Amérique méridionale) (in French).
- ^ a b Lehmann-Nitsche, Roberto. "Vocabulario Puelche" (PDF).
- ^ Viegas Barros, Pedro J. (2005). Voces en el viento: Raíces lingüísticas de la Patagonia. Colección El Suri. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Mondragon. ISBN 9871163045.
- ^ Orden, María Emilia (2008). "La frase nominal en gününa iajëch" (PDF). XI Congreso de la Sociedad Argentina de Lingüística en la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Universidad Nacional del Litoral: Coloquio Lenguas Indígenas sudamericanas: aspectos morfosintácticos y léxicos. XI Congreso de la Sociedad Argentina de Lingüística. Santa Fe: CONICET. pp. 1–12. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 January 2012.
- ^ "Argentina: Historiador Rodolfo Casamiquela : 'Los mapuches son chilenos... no tienen derecho sobre la tierra'" [Argentina: Historian Rodolfo Casamiquela : "The Mapuches are Chilean... they have no right to the land"]. BWN Patagonia (in Spanish). 2007. Archived from the original on 15 December 2010. Retrieved 7 June 2019.
- ^ a b Casamiquela, Rodolfo M. (1983). Nociones de gramática del gününa küne. Paris: French National Centre for Scientific Research. pp. 34–40.
- ^ Barros, J. Viegas. Un nuevo análisis fonológico del gününa yajüch. CONICET-Universidad de Buenos Aires
- ^ a b Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Classification of South American Indian languages. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center.
- ^ "South Amerindian Languages". zompist.com. Retrieved 2023-05-09.
External links
[edit]- Gününa Küne language dictionary online from IDS (select simple or advanced browsing)
- WALS: Puelche
- Gününa Küne (Intercontinental Dictionary Series)