Jarawara Interlinear Texts Vol. 2

Introduction

This is the promised second volume of interlinearized Jarawara texts. Unlike the first volume (Vogel 2012), which consisted of texts interlinearized using the Toolbox program, these texts were interlinearized using Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEx).¹

I began recording the texts in 1987. The texts were originally recorded on cassette tape (earlier texts) or in digital format (later texts), and transcribed with the help of a number of literate Jarawaras: Bibiri, Yasito, Soweo, Kakai, Ati Hiwawawi, Mioto, Tanieo, Saiba, Eti, Arimana, Soki, Kona Abono, Rosiano, Hotiriko, Atere, Etiso, Betiro, Sesowe, Erieti, Bai Nafira, Firibi, Atoni, and Maira. Many remaining questions were resolved in sessions with Okomobi and Bibiri, both of who have a true gift for language; and Botenawa and Kamo also helped to resolve some questions. The recordings were made in Casa Nova village, where the authors live.² The author of each text is listed at the beginning of the text. The author of each text, or a relative if the author had died, gave permission to use the texts for non-commercial purposes.

These texts should not be seen as polished written texts. All of the texts are originally oral texts, none are originally written. The recordings are unedited, and the transcriptions reflect the recordings as exactly as possible. This means, for example, that false starts, repetitions of words, and occasional grammatical mistakes are retained in the transcription. Some of these are discussed in footnotes, but most are not.

The texts are divided into two groups, personal experience narratives and traditional stories. Many of the personal experience narratives are told in the first person, but many others are told in the third person. Some of the third person stories relate events that are said to have occurred long ago, but there were people alive who the narrators, although they may not have met them, they at least knew the connection to (for example a great-grandparent who died before the narrator was born). The traditional stories, in contrast, involve characters in the more distant past.

The following format is used for each text. First a free translation is given of the text, and this is followed by the text in interlinear format. The first line of the interlinear format is orthographic. The second line represents underlying forms³ and morphemic divisions, the third line morpheme-by-morpheme glosses, the fourth line word classes,⁴ and the last line a sentence by sentence translation. The sentence by sentence translation is as literal as possible, in contrast to the free translation at the beginning of each text, which seeks to express the meaning of the text in more natural English. In the free translation, some implied information is added, participant reference (e.g. choice of a pronoun or an NP) follows the conventions of English, and some repetition is omitted.

Note that some Jarawara sentences are very long, because of the way many "dependent clauses" are sometimes strung together. For more information on dependent clauses, see Dixon (2004) and Vogel (2009).

The Jarawara orthography is pretty much phonemic and transparent, except that long vowels are not distinguished. For an explanation of the orthography, see my Jarawara-English Dictionary, which is online. In the line for underlying forms, the symbol I is used to represent a morphophoneme that is realized as i or e, depending on the number of moras preceding in the word.

In the orthographic line I have used punctuation in the normal ways, with one significant exception. Whereas the normal use of commas is to indicate grammatical pauses, I have used commas to indicate phonetic pauses. Some readers may find this awkward, since the pauses are often in the middle of a phrase and are not for any grammatical reason – speakers often pause just to think of what to say next – but I wanted to register this information, and could not think of any other way to do it.

The following abbreviations are used:

1 - first person

+F - feminine agreement

NPQ - noun phrase question

1EX - first person plural exclusive

FP - far past

O - direct object

1IN - first person plural inclusive

F.PL - plural and feminine

OC - O-construction

2 - second person

fpropn - feminine proper noun

PFUT - past in future

3 - third person

FUT - future

PL - plural (i.e. two or more)

adj - adjective

HAB - habitual

pn - inalienably possessed noun

ADJU - adjunct

HYPOTH - hypothetical

POSS - possessor/possessive

adv - adverb

IMMED - immediate

pron - pronoun

antip - antipassive

IMP - imperative

prt - particle

AUX - auxiliary

INT - intentive

RECIP - reciprocal

BKG - backgrounding

interj - interjection

REFL - reflexive

CAUS - causative

interrog - interrogative pro-form

REP - reported

CH - change of state

IP - immediate past

result - resultative

COMPL - complement

IRR - irrealis

RP - recent past

COMIT - comitative

LIST - list construction

S - subject

conj - conjunction

LOC - locative

SEC - secondary verb

CONT - continuative

+M - masculine agreement

SG - singular

CNTRFAT - contrafactual

mpropn - masculine proper noun

sp - species

CQ - content question

N - non-eyewitness evidentiality

sound - sound word

DECL - declarative

NEG - negative

SUPER - superlative

DEM - demonstrative

NEG.LIST - negative list item

vc - copular verb

DIST - distal

nf - feminine noun

vd - ditransitive verb

DISTR - distributive

NFIN - non-finite

vi - intransitive verb

DUP - reduplication

nm - masculine noun

voc - vocative

E - eyewitness evidentiality

NOM - nominalized clause

vt - transitive verb

Those wishing more information on the syntax, morphology, and phonology of Jarawara may consult R.M.W. Dixon’s (2004) grammar, The Jarawara Language of Southern Amazonia, and the introduction to my Jarawara-English Dictionary.

I welcome any comments or questions, and I can be reached at [email protected].

Footnotes

1 Both Toolbox and FLEx are available for free download from the SIL International site (sil.org).

2 The approximately 230 speakers of Jarawara live on the Jamamadi-Jarawara reservation in the municipality of Lábrea in the state of Amazonas, Brazil.

3 The second line is intended to represent underlying phonological forms, including long vowels, which are not represented in the Jarawara orthography. However, in some cases the underlying form is more morphological than it is phonological. There are vowel alternations of Jarawara verbs that are reflexes of grammatical processes, namely gender agreement and the derivation of non-finite forms. Where an underlying morphological form can be determined, I use it instead of all the forms that result from grammatical processes. For example, the suffix -ma 'back' typically has only this one form in contexts where there is no gender agreement, and typically has a -ma/-me alternation in other contexts to show feminine and masculine agreement, respectively. I use -ma as the underlying form in all contexts, but show gender agreement on the second line ('-back+F' or '-back+M') in all contexts where the form indicates the normal gender agreement found in finite clauses.

Similarly, a non-finite form is derived by changing a final a to i, but I use the form with a as the underlying form even when it is a non-finite form, and I indicate that the form is non-finite by adding NFIN. For example, I give the underlying form of fawa 'to drink', which is fawi, as fawa.NFIN. One of the advantages of doing things this way is that a search for all the tokens of a particular morpheme is made much easier. Also, this way it is possible to indicate that a form is non-finite even if there is no a to i change, which is the case for verbs ending with o, i, or e.

In Jarawara there is a construction called a "list construction", and one of the exponents of this construction is that there is no gender agreement in the verb stem. Whenever this is the case, I indicate this on the second line. For example, when fawa is in a list construction, this is indicated on the second line as fawa.LIST. This way, the reader knows the reason that a at the end of the verb does not indicate feminine agreement. (Since the items in a list construction can sometimes be NPs, the same notation is used to mark these.)

There is one more construction that is marked on the second line, i.e. nominalized clauses. These verb forms are marked with NOM, along with the gender when this is indicated in the form, i.e. NOM+F or NOM+M. This gender agreement is thus distinguished from the normal gender agreement of finite clauses.

4 This is a change from vol. 1, in which the class of each morpheme of a word was given, rather than the class of the word as a whole.