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. 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 PemĂłng-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.
Phonology
Consonants Panare contains approximately 14 contrasting consonant phonemes, with variation depending on dialect and origins of certain lexical items.
Notes /n/ = /_#, _C/ elsewhere; /ɲ/ has phonemic status in loanwords from Spanish, and is an allophone in native words; Payne & Payne consider /ʔ/ and /h/ to be different allophones of an “underlying pharyngeal approximate,” that releases differently depending on environment. There are also records of these two phones occurring in free variation, which may be attributed to once-distinct dialects being merged into communities of speakers with idiolectical contrasts.
Morphology
Panare is best classified as a heavy-agglutinating language that verges on polysynthesis. Many of its morphemes can be clearly identified by roots that remain isolated across inflectional processes, and inflection by multiple affixes is usually light. Words can grow long and complicated, but they can usually be rooted in one firm idea, rather than something akin to a process-based sentence. However, elements of polysynthesis appear in how roots are initially inflected. Essentially, most roots are bound morphemes in some way, and require at least one inflectional morpheme until they can be used as units in a sentence. For example:
'-uwaatĂŻ' roughly correlates to 'burn,' but is a bound morpheme
'yuwaatï' means, 'it’s going to burn.' 'Yuwaatïjtepe' means, 'it wants to burn.' They are both complete words.
Syntax
Panare sentence structuredoes 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.
Distribution
The speakers of Panare live in BolĂvar, Venezuela, west of the Cuchivero basin of the Orinoco River. Up until the 21st Century, the Panare had few contacts with non-indigenous peoples. However, increasing interactions with Venezuelans has led to widespread bilingualism with Spanish.
