The Upper Rio

Negro

- a brief

introduction

Kristine Stenzel

UFRJ

BR

CO

Features of the regional system

Ethnic and linguistic diversity, geographic

distribution

Features contributing to establishing and

maintaining multilingualism:

Language-identity link

Shared cultural practices

Essentialist language ideology

Ethnolinguistic

Diversity

and

Geographic

Distribution

East Tukano (18) Arawak (7) Tupi-Guarani

Arapaso† Baniwa Nheengatú/Língua GeralBarasana Baré†Bará Kabiyari Yanomami (5)

Desano Kuripako Ninam Karapanã Tariana SanumaKubeo Werekena YanomamiMakuna Yukuna YanomamMiriti-tapuyo† Yãroamɨ

Wa’ikhana/Piratapuyo Nadahup (Makú) (4)

Pisamira Dâw Kákua - Nɨkák (2)Retuarã HupSiriano YuhupTaiwano/Eduuria Nadëb NationalTatuyo PortugueseTukano/Ye’pa masa SpanishTuyukaKotiria/WananoYuruti

Ethnolinguistic groups and languages

(Cabalzar e Ricardo 1998; FOIRN/ISA 2000; ISA/PIB)

East Tukano (18) Arawak (7) Tupi-Guarani

Arapaso† Baniwa (part) Nheengatú/Língua GeralBarasana Baré†Bará Kabiyari Yanomami (5)

Desano Kuripako Ninam Karapanã Tariana SanumaKubeo Warekena YanomamiMakuna Yukuna YanomamMiriti-tapuyo† Yãroamɨ

Wa’ikhana Nadahup (Makú) (4)

Pisamira Dâw Kákua - Nɨkák (2)Retuarã HupSiriano YuhupTaiwano/Eduuria Nadëb NationalTatuyo PortugueseTukano/Ye’pa masa SpanishTuyukaKotiriaYuruti

Major Shifts

(Cabalzar e Ricardo 1998; FOIRN/ISA 2000; ISA/PIB)

East Tukano (18) Arawak (7) Tupi-Guarani

Arapaso† Baniwa (part) Nheengatú/Língua GeralBarasana Baré†Bará Kabiyari Yanomami (5)

Desano (part) Kuripako Ninam Karapanã Tariana SanumaKubeo Warekena YanomamiMakuna Yukuna YanomamMiriti-tapuyo† Yãroamɨ

Wa’ikhana (part) Nadahup (Makú) (4)

Pisamira Dâw Kákua - Nɨkák (2)Retuarã HupSiriano YuhupTaiwano/Eduuria Nadëb NationalTatuyo PortugueseTukano SpanishTuyukaKotiriaYuruti

Major Shifts

(Cabalzar e Ricardo 1998; FOIRN/ISA 2000; ISA/PIB)

map

ET

AR

AR

NA

K-N

YN

NE

Contact,

Language and

Social Identity

Parallels in Cultural and

Discursive Practice

(Epps)

Types of contact and interaction

General:

Frequent interaction in ritual/ceremonial activities

Institutionalized exchange of material

goods, with trade specializations:

(Ribeiro 1995)

East Tukano and (AR) Tariana, Baniwa:

Intermarriage via linguistic exogamy

Nadahup

BaniwaTukano

Tuyuka

Language - ‘badge’ of social identity

Individual affiliated to a language group by

patrilineal descent;

Reinforced by social practices:

Virilocality

Group – territory association

Exogamic marriage (group=phratry)

Agnates (proscribed) / Affins (cross-cousins preferred)

Principle of ‘sister exchange’

Importance of geographic proximity - formation of ‘in-

law’ groups and local linguistic ‘repertoires’

(Sorensen 1967; Jackson 1974, 1976, 1983; C. Hugh-Jones 1979; Chernela 1993; Cabalzar 2000; Stenzel 2005, many others)

Linguistic Exogamy

kotiria

tariana

tukano

desano

masc fem

baniwa

FATHER’S

SISTER’S

DAUGHTER

MOTHER’S

BROTHER’S

DAUGHTER

Multilingual Community

Multilingual

Individual

SISTER EXCHANGE

CROSS-COUSIN MARRIAGE

REINFORCEMENT OF MOTHER’S LANGUAGE

PATRILINEAL DESCENT

Ideology and

language

‘etiquette’

Essentialist language ideology

Speaking=being patrilect ‘loyalty’

Hierarchization of individual’s repertoire:

patrilect “language I speak”

> matrilect, alterlects “languages I imitate”

Norms of ‘Language etiquette’:

avoidance and repression of ‘imperfect’ (learner) /

‘mixed’ speech (code-switching, lexical borrowing)

pure ‘monolingual’ speech as ideal

(Chernela 1989, 2003, 2004, 2013; Chernela & Shulist 2014; Aikhenvald 2002; Gomez-

Imbert 1991, 1993, 1996)

Essentialist language ideology

System maintenance (Gomez-Imbert 1991):

In a context of intense contact that promotes

convergence, speakers make “explicit and

conscious efforts” to keep linguistic codes distinct

and ‘pure’.

Multilingual

speech -

challenges on

the horizon

What do we think we know

and what do we really know?

Traditional ‘simultaneous’ multilingualism (ET, AR) (Chernela & Shulist 2014)

Non-reciprocal bilingualism (NA, KN) (Epps 2008, 2016;

Bolaños 2016)

Permitted code-switching (Gomez-Imbert XX; Aikhenvald 2002)

Use of national languages

Special circumstances: quotation, imitation,

Anything else?

Dynamics of ‘small-scale’

multilingual systems(Singer & Harris 2016; Lüpke 2016)

“Ongoing, balanced multilingualism practiced in regionally

confined societies.”

“[Systems] found in areas with little or only recent exposure

to Western language ideologies, but are highly vulnerable

to external pressures that can quickly undermine local

multilingual patterns”

“[Systems in which] mismatches between language

ideologies - [what speakers say/believe they do] - and actual

communicative practices are systematic, necessitating

“studies of actual language use in naturalistic (not self-

censored) settings”

The next big challenge. . .

Documentation of everyday interaction, CA/IL

methodology in conjunction with micro-level

grammatical analysis & socioling interviews.

Implications:

better understanding of range of speech

modalities: monolingual multilingual

Role of multilingual elements in social interaction

Language contact, language change

References

Aikhenvald, A. 2002. Language Contact in Amazonia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cabalzar, A. 2000. Descendência e aliança no espaço tuyuka. A noção de nexo regional no noroeste amazônico. Revista de Antropologia 43: 61-88.

Cabalzar, A. and B. Ricardo 1998. Povos Indígenas do alto e médio rio Negro: uma introdução à diversidade cultural e ambiental do noroeste da

Amazônica brasileira. São Paulo/São Gabriel da Cachoeira: Instituto Socioambiental/FOIRN.

Chernela, J. 1989. Marriage, Language, and History among Eastern Tukanoan Speaking Peoples of the Northwest Amazon. The Latin American

Anthropology Review 1(2): 36-42.

_____. 1993. The Wanano Indians of the Brazilian Amazon: A Sense of Space. Austin: University of Texas Press.

_____. 2003. Language Ideology and Women’s Speech: Talking Community in the Northwest Amazon. American Anthropologist 105(4): 794-806.

_____. 2004. The Politics of Language Acquisition: Language Learning as Social Modeling in the Northwest Amazon. Women and Language 27: 13-21.

_____. 2013. Toward an East Tukano Ethnolinguistics: Metadiscursive Practices, Identity, and Sustained Linguistic Diversity in the Vaupés Basin of Brazil and

Colombia. In Upper Rio Negro: Cultural and Linguistic Interaction in Northwestern Amazonia, edited by Patience Epps & Kristine Stenzel, 197-244. Rio de

Janeiro: Museu Nacional, Museu do Índio-FUNAI.

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Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington D.C.

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_____. 1996. When Animals become ‘Rounded’ and ‘Feminine’: Conceptual Categories and Linguistic Classification in a Multilingual Setting. In Rethinking

Linguistic Relativity, edited by John J. Gumperz & Stephen. C. Levinson, 438-469. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References

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do Índio-FUNAI.

Hugh-Jones, C. 1979 From the Milk River. Spatial and Temporal Processes in Northwest Amazonia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

ISA (Insitituto Socioambiental) Povos Indígenas do Brasil - online. http://pib.socioambiental.org/

Jackson, J. E. Language and Identity of the Colombian Vaupés Indians. In Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking, edited by Richard Bauman & Joel

Sherzer, 50-64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

_____. 1976. Vaupés Marriage: a Network System in an Undifferentiated Lowland Area of South America. In Regional Analysis. Vol 2: Social Systems, edited

by Carol A. Smith, 65-93. New York, NY: Academic Press.

_____. 1983. The Fish People: Linguistic Exogamy and Tukanoan Identity in Northwest Amazonia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Neves, pp. 266-286. London: The British Museum Press.

Ribeiro, B. G. 1995. Os índios das águas pretas: modo de produção e equipamento produtivo. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras/EdUSP.

Singer, R, and S. Harris 2016. What practices and ideologies support small-scale multilingualism?: A case study of unexpected language survival in an

Australian Indigenous community. International Journal for the Sociology of Language.

Sorensen, A. P. Jr. 1967. Multilingualism in the Northwest Amazon. American Anthropologist 69: 670-684.

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Austin, Texas. http://www.ailla.utexas.org/site/cilla2_toc_sp.html

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