The Murui Language and Its Speakers

chapter 1 The Murui Language and Its Speakers

Murui (known as Bue or, previously, as Uitoto, Witoto, and Huitoto) (muru1274, huu1) is one of four dialects of the Murui-Muina language (nucl1659) (Echeverri, Fagua Rincón, & Wojtylak, forthcoming). Murui-Muina dialect continuum belongs to the Witotoan language family (huit1251) spoken in Northwest Amazonia, in southern Colombia and northern Peru. The Witotoan family consists of two other languages from Northwest Amazonia, Ocaina (known also as Okaina, ocai1244, oca; spoken by about 90 people today) and Nonuya (nonu1241, noj; a language with no fluent speakers left). Murui is currently spoken by some 2,000 people that traditionally inhabited the region of the Amazon Basin between the middle sections of the Caquetá and Putumayo Rivers in Colombia and their tributaries, the Igaraparaná and Caraparaná Rivers. Today, smaller Murui tribes also live outside of the Caquetá-Putumayo region. There is a mixed Murui-Mɨnɨka community located in the Resguardo Indígena Tikuna-Uitoto (known as Kilómetro 11) close to Leticia in the Department of Amazonas in Colombia. Some Murui groups also live in the areas along the Ampiyacú and Napo Rivers in Peru; Petersen de Piñeros and Patiño Rosselli (2000, p. 219). Although the Colombian villages El Encanto, Tercera India, San Rafael, and San José are the biggest settlements of the Murui groups, some clans also reside in the village of La Chorrera (Igaraparaná), the reservations Los Monos, Kuemani, and Monochoa (mid-Caquetá), and the city of Puerto Leguízamo (Putumayo). In addition, various Murui families are scat- tered throughout Colombia and Peru, with many families living in cities, such as Bogotá and Leticia (Colombia) and Iquitos (Peru). Approximate locations of the Murui groups are shown on Map 1.1. ‘Murui-Muina’ indicates mixed villages of the Murui, Mɨka, Mɨnɨka, and Nɨpode speakers. Murui together with Mɨka, Mɨnɨka, and Nɨpode, known in literature as “Witoto” or, more recently, as “Murui-Muina”, form a dialect continuum. Although all Murui-Muina dialects are mutually intelligible, Murui and Mɨka are much more similar than Mɨnɨka or Nɨpode (see §1.5). Murui, Mɨka, Mɨnɨka, and Nɨpode groups recognize their common ancestry but consider themselves to be separate social groups speaking different languages. In this grammar,

1 The Glottolog code corresponds to four letters and four digits (https://glottolog.org/); the Ethnologue code contains three letters (https://www.ethnologue.com/).

map 1.1 Approximate locations of the Murui, Mɨka, Mɨnɨka, and Nɨpode groups in Colombia and Peru (‘Murui-Muina’ indicates mixed villages)

I refer to Murui as a “language” in the political sense; linguistically, it is clearly one of the Murui-Muina dialects. The Murui-Muina people form part of what Echeverri (1997) called a “cultural complex”, known more broadly as the “People of the Center” (Echeverri, 1997). Eight ethnolinguistic groups belong to this cultural area; these are the Murui-Muina, Nonuya, Ocaina, Bora, Miraña, Muinane, Resígaro, and Andoke (§1.2). All these groups have various cultural characteristics in common, in- cluding the custom of the ritual ingestion of pounded coca leaves and tobacco in a liquid form. This book offers the first detailed description of Murui. Following Basic Linguistic Theory (Dixon, 2010b, 2012), the reference grammar presents analy- ses of Murui phonology, morphology, syntax, and discourse organization.