Desano () is a Tucanoan language of Colombia and Brazil. There are several alternative names for Desano, including Boleka, Desâna, and Kusibi. It is spoken primarily in northwest Brazil and southern Colombia.
The Desano language has a 90% lexical similarity with the Siriano language. The language is reported to have a form of whistled speech.
The primary concentration of Desano people is by the Tiquié River in Brazil and Colombia. They also reside near the Papuri River, and their respective tributaries, and on the Vaupés river, which borders Brazil and Colombia, and Negro rivers, as well as in the cities within the area.
This region is populated by a number of other ethnic communities, most notably the Hup people, with whom they share several linguistic and cultural characteristics.
The earliest extensive linguistic study of Desano was conducted by Kaye in 1970. In his study, he systematically covered the semantics, phonetics, and syntax of the language. In his study, Kaye attempts to compare Desano, which he describes as âÂÂan undocumented languageâÂÂ, with the syntactic models from Noam Chomsky as an early way to formally document and access the syntactic patterns of Desano. Kaye has also outlined certain phonological features in Desano, namely nasal assimilation, vowel coalescence, and epenthesis. Years later, Chacon (2007) carried out a phonological-comparison project focusing on Tukano and Desano, which are sister languages within the same family. ChaconâÂÂs research has taken into consideration certain historical aspects of the land where each of the languages were spoken as an attempt to further study the impact of history on the languageâÂÂs phonological aspects.
Years later, Silva (2012) carried out and published descriptive grammar research on Desano. Predominantly focusing on morphological rules and patterns, Silva has also outlined certain syntactic patterns of Desano in relation to the historical background of the language community. This includes the noun-classifier and evidentiality systems, outlined by Silva. Silva has also included certain notable phonological features of Desano, namely nasal-harmony, rarely found in other languages and previously studied by Kaye.
Similar in nature, but perhaps slightly different from a language-documentation project, Miller (1999) has conducted in-depth primary experience-based research into Desano by living with the people in Colombia. Her publication focuses mainly on syntactic features of Desano, including but not limited to the issue of verb-compounding, as well as various phonological observations. Miller has also included in her publication examples from the boreka pora dialect of the twenty-two dialects documented in Desano, in order to support the syntactic arguments suggested.
Thorough documentation of Desano morphology is available from various scholars, mainly contributed by Reichel-Dolmatoff (in Portuguese), and Silva (in English). In which, Silva (2012) has offered a detailed account that covers the nominal and the verbal aspects of Desano morphology. Nominal morphology covers noun roots, pronouns, noun phrase (NP) structures, while verbal morphology covers verb roots, verb classes, and verb constructions. In terms of noun roots, Desano has bimoraic nouns that follow certain tonal requirements, such that each word contains at least one high tone. In general, Desano words follow a CVCV structure in terms of consonants and vowels, which is similar to that of Japanese. Desano nouns generally have a masculine-feminine distinction, as demonstrated in its pronoun inventory. Furthermore, its verbs distinguish between âÂÂanimateâ and âÂÂinanimateâ entities, which is of close relation to the nature. On top of that, it is evident that Desano presents a clear cut between human beings and non human beings in regards to its lexicon, as illustrated by its strict structure of verb class. DesanoâÂÂs verb class also details in singular or plural, high class or low class animates, and countable and uncountables. Overall, it is clear that Desano follows a clear and strict morphological order, which details from pronunciation to word choice, and from physical to supernatural state.
There are two kinds of pronouns in Desano, namely personal pronouns and demonstrative pronouns. Some come with a masculine and feminine distinction in certain classes, similar to that of French or Portuguese.
Personal pronouns in Desano are somewhat comparable to that of âÂÂI, we, you, they, he, she, itâ in English, in a sense that there is a distinction between first, second, third person, and also singular or plural subjects.
Demonstrative pronouns are used to âÂÂmake a distinction between âÂÂproximalâ and âÂÂdistalâÂÂ, such distinction of proximity could be understood as using âÂÂthisâ or âÂÂthatâ in English, in relation to the distance between the speaker and the object.
The two main verb classes of Desano are stative and non-stative. There are five subcategories of stative verbs, and four prominent subcategories of non-stative verbs.
Nouns in Desano are subdivided in the following categories, which are marked:
Some nouns naturally have the gender marking suffix in them, due to an amalgamation of the root of the noun and the gender marking suffix, therefore they are considered to be inherently feminine or masculine.
Desano is hierarchical. Third-person is at the top of the hierarchy, followed by animate, then singular, and lastly, masculine. At the end of declarative sentences in Desano, there are personal endings that are in agreement with the verbâÂÂs subject.
Personal endings in use
Singular is a feature often given by a base rule. Third-person, animate, and masculine are often thought of as being inherent features of nouns; however, there is some evidence that shows masculine behaves differently than third-person and animate. The evidence supports the claim that it is a feature that is provided grammatically, not inherently a noun feature. The masculine feature in Desano is unmarked, and only given to nouns that are animate-singular.
/abe/ âÂÂsun, moonâ Desano people would not consider this object to be feminine or masculine, therefore it is unmarked for gender. This means that in cases of agreement, /abe/ will act as a masculine noun. Many nouns which are presented as unmarked for gender will behave as a masculine or feminine noun, with the only indication of gender being the personal verb ending.
Desano has three tenses:
Three tenses of Desano uses relative measurement of time and space, which relies heavier on the speakerâÂÂs judgement at the time of the conversation.
Examples of general tense:
Examples of non-present tense:
Examples of remote tense:
From the examples above, it is evident that the tense marker is clearly visible in the written script. Instead of modifying the target verb like many languages (such as transforming eat to ate for the past tense in English), Desano tense markers come in the form of an additional block after the target verb (illustrated by T, e, and R). Overall, Desano tense works closely with its unique mood system, which also embeds emotion into the written form of the grammar itself.
There are 2 types of irrealis statements:
Markers of oriented modality:
<section begin="list-of-glossing-abbreviations" /><div style="display:none;"> PROX:proximal GEN:general tense CONTR:contrary </div><section end="list-of-glossing-abbreviations" />