Язык Панаре: Классификация, структура и особенности

Cariban language

Panare is a member of the Cariban language family, though its sub grouping within the family is a matter of contention. The first decades of attempted classifications were largely rejected by linguists, a uniform classification of all proposed members of the Cariban family was introduced by Terrence Kaufman (1994). This grouping, still widely used by linguists, classifies Panare as a member of the Southern Amazonian branch, with no cousin languages. However, Spike Gildea has criticized this grouping as relying on faulty data used for earlier classifications by Durbin and Loukotka that have been since rejected. In 2012, Gildea put forth his own classification, which groups Panare as a member of the Venezuelan Carib branch, and in turn, part of the low level Pemóng Panare branch. This classification has been considered an improvement by linguists such as Lyle Campbell and Doris & Thomas Payne, but it has yet to replace the Kaufman grouping, largely due to its relative youth.

Panare sentence structure does not follow a strict word order, but a flexible one. In most studies, it is classified as an object initial language. However, subject object verb and subject verb object are known to appear frequently as well. This kind of "object initial tendency" is quite common in Amazonia, where sentence structure is often more consistently arranged through clause construction type than word order. As a result, Panare and its neighboring languages often use case markings as a way of ordering how constituents of a sentence affect each other. Future, desiderative, and nonspecific aspect clauses in Panare instantiate the cross linguistically rare nominative–absolutive alignment. An example is given below. In Panare nominative–absolutive clauses, the nominative and absolutive are distinguished as follows. The unmarked nominative (pro)noun (if it occurs explicitly) always follows the predicate (kën in the example above), with nominative agreement in the auxiliary if there is one (këj in the example above). In contrast, the absolutive arguments are indexed by means of verbal prefixes (y in the example above) or by absolutive nouns phrases (not shown above), which are in a complimentary distribution with the absolutive person prefixes.

The speakers of Panare (called E'ñepa (lit. "people") in their own language) live in Bolívar, Venezuela, west of the Cuchivero basin of the Orinoco River. Up until the 21st century, the Panare had few contacts with non indigenous peoples (the few being explorers and anthropologists). However, increasing interactions with Venezuelans has led to widespread bilingualism with Spanish.