Karu, one of several languages called Baniwa (Baniva), or in older sources Itayaine (Iyaine), is an Arawakan language spoken in GuainÃÂa, Colombia, Venezuela, and Amazonas, Brazil. It forms a subgroup with the Tariana, Piapoco, ResÃÂgaro and Guarequena languages. There are 10,000 speakers.
Aikhenvald (1999) considers the three main varieties to be dialects; Kaufman (1994) considers them to be distinct languages, in a group he calls "Karu". They are:
Various of all three are called tapuya, a Brazilian Portuguese and Nheengatu word for non-Tupi/non-Guarani Indigenous peoples of Brazil (from a Tupi word meaning "enemy, barbarian"). All are spoken by the Baniwa people. Ruhlen lists all as "Izaneni"; Greenberg's Adzánani (= Izaneni) presumably belongs here.
Ramirez (2020) gives the following classification for three separate dialect chains:
When short, the vowels are realized as . Vowels are nasalized when adjacent to nasal consonants; nasal is realized as , while the other vowels show little change in their place of articulation when nasalized.
More precisely, stressed vowels are nasalized before simple nasal consonants, and vowels on either side of voiceless nasals are nasalized regardless of whether they are stressed.
Sequences of vowels may reduce to diphthongs and triphthongs, for example for . The resulting behaves differently than the consonant .
Baniwa has activeâÂÂstative alignment. This means that the subject of an intransitive clause is sometimes marked in the same way as the agent of a transitive clause, and sometimes marked in the same way as the patient of a transitive clause. In Baniwa alignment is realized through verbal agreement, namely prefixes and enclitics.
Prefixes are used to mark:
Enclitics are used to mark:
The differences between active and stative intransitive clauses can be illustrated below:
Baniwa has an interesting system of noun classification that combines a gender system with a noun classifier system. Baniwa has two genders: feminine and nonfeminine. Feminine gender agreement is used to refer to female referents, whilst nonfeminine gender agreement is used for all other referents. The two genders are only distinguished in third person singular. Aihkenvald (2007) considers the bipartite gender system to be inherited from Proto-Arawak.
In addition to gender, Baniwa also has 46 classifiers. Classifiers are used in three main contexts:
Aihkenvald (2007) divides Baniwa classifiers into four different classes. One set of classifiers is used for humans, animate beings and body parts. Another set of classifiers specify the shape, consistency, quantification or specificity of the noun. Two more classes can be distinguished. One is only used with numerals and the other is only used with adjectives.
Classifiers for Humans and animate beings:
Classifiers according to shape, consistency, quantification and specificity:
There are two main strategies for negation in the Kurripako-Baniwa varieties:
Different varieties have different negative markers. This is so prominent that speakers identify Kurripako dialects according to the words for 'yes' and 'no'.
The independent negative markers come before the verb. They are used as clausal negators in declarative and interrogative sentences. They are also used to link clauses.
The privative suffix is attached to nouns to derive a verb which means 'lacking' the noun from which it was derived. The opposite of the privative prefix is the attributive prefix ka-. This derives a verb which means 'having' the noun from which it was derived. The difference can be illustrated below:
The prefix is used in combination with the restrictive suffix -tsa to form negative imperatives, e.g. ma-ihnia-tsa 'don't eat!'. A privative prefix is also reconstructed in Proto-Arawak privative as *ma-.
Granadillo (2014) considers Kurripako a VOS language.