Kulina language


Kulina is an Arawan language of Brazil and Peru spoken by about 4,000 Kulina people. With such few speakers, Kulina is considered a threatened language. Kulina is similar to the Deni language, as they have even been considered different dialects of the same language. Both languages have SOV word order, as well as three sets of alveolar affricate consonants. It is believed the presence of the reconstructed phoneme *s in place of the fricative *sh is indicative of the Kulina and Deni languages as opposed to other languages in the Arawan family.

History and Geography

The Kulina people traditionally live in the states of Acre and Amazonas in Brazil and the Ucayali region in Peru. In Acre and Ucayali, the villages are found along the Purus and Envira rivers. In Amazonas, the villages are around the Juruá, Tarauacá and Jutaí rivers.

Classification

Kulina is a member of the Arawan language family. According to Dienst, it forms a Madihá dialect continuum with Western Jamamadi and Deni. The term madihá means 'people' in all of these languages.

Grammar

The basic constituent order is subject–object–verb. It is predominantly a head-marking language with agglutinative morphology and some fusion. Kulina is a head-final language and contains many more suffixes than prefixes. There are two noun classes and two genders and agreement on transitive verbs is determined by a number of complex factors, both syntactic and pragmatic. In transitive sentences, the verb agree with the object in gender and with the subject in person and number. In intransitive sentences, the verb agrees with its subject in person, number and gender.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonants sounds /pʰ, t̪, d͡z, t͡s, t͡sʰ, ɾ, β~w/ may also be pronounced as /ɸ~f, t͡ʃ, z~ɟ, s, sʰ~ʃ, l, v/.

Vowels

An sound can also range to a sound. The vowel sound only appears in diphthongs.