A GRAMMATICAL DESCRIPTION OF KAMSÁ, A LANGUAGE ISOLATE OF COLOMBIA A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS DECEMBER 2018 By Colleen Alena O’Brien Dissertation Committee: Lyle Campbell, Chairperson Robert Blust Gary Holton William O’Grady Alexander Mawyer ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to thank all of the Kamsás who welcomed me into their lives: Carmen, without whom nothing would have been possible; Margarita, Clemencia, Anita, and Maria Clementina for teaching me their language; Alejandro for all the wonderful conversations about language, philosophy, and life; as well as Margarita, Andrés, Ivan, Miguel, Luis, Sandra, and Rosita. I have been extremely lucky to have worked with Lyle Campbell, who is the best advisor anyone could ever hope for. I would also like to thank my committee members, William O’Grady, Gary Holton, Bob Blust, and Alex Mawyer; and Robert Littman, who was the reason I was able to do a graduate degree at the University of Hawai‘i. My friends in Bogotá offered me incredible support. I would like to thank Pipe for dedicating his time to working with me on Kamsá; Gustavo, whose conversations kept me going; Jennifer for always being willing to accompany me into the jungle; Andrea, one of the most lovely people in the world; Andrés for the evenings in La Candelaria; Edinson for our lunches together; Daniel for being my bodyguard; Francisco and Gloria for their hospitality; Lili for being my Colombian mother and friend; Javier for the inspiration; David for the breaks from el centro; Leidy for sharing insights about Kamsá; Camilo for being wonderful; Jorge for our mornings in Juan Valdez; Paul for the walks in the rain; Laura and Rajiv … I don’t know where to begin; Gerriet for always helping; Arturo for becoming my friend at BBC; Ricardo for our time together; Fernando for helping me before I knew Spanish; Mauricio for making things a little more fun; Alejandro and Juan for giving me a home; Yinneth for her great knowledge; Katy for the chats over coffee; and Youlin for helping me before she even knew me. There have been many other people in Colombia whom I’m grateful to as well: Luisa for opening her home to me; Henry in Sibundoy; Gloria in Manizales. Some friends from the US visited me during my time in Colombia, making my time there even more pleasant. I’d like to thank John for making the first trip to Sibundoy with me; Ariane for staying in touch … hopefully we see each other more; Noah, these years have been crazy; Erik for always being there to talk and helping edit more drafts of things than I can count; Joachim for being willing to do anything; Craig for being a great friend and going with me to the beach. Other friends who’ve been supportive during my degree, some of whom I’ve known since elementary school, some I’ve met more recently: Don, Vlad, Laura, Jonathan, and Verna. I’d also like to thank my parents. Other mentors who have guided me during my PhD include Bryan, without whom I may never have done academia; Caleb for always seeming to believe in me; Thiago for offering advice along the way in Colombia; and Brett for the advice and contacts, starting in Cambridge. I’d like to thank friends and classmates in Hawai‘i who’ve helped in various ways throughout the PhD process: Eve, Kirsten, Samantha, Kavon, John, Ryan, Sejung, Victoria, George, Laura, Clara, Kevin, Adila, and Melody. I am also grateful for the generous agencies that have helped fund my research including the Bilinski Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the American Association of University Women, and the Foundation for Endangered Languages. Finally, I’d like to thank Russell. ii ABSTRACT This dissertation presents a description of the grammar of Kamsá, an endangered language isolate spoken in the Putumayo department of southern Colombia. It is the first developed account of the language’s phonology, morphology, and syntax. Kamsá is highly endangered due to the displacement of speakers and language shift. A reference grammar of a previously under-described language offers a number of potential benefits to general linguistics, showing what is possible in human languages. In addition to typologists, comparative and historical linguists are always interested to see whether an assumed isolate may, in fact, be demonstrably related to a known language family. The increasing endangerment of Kamsá, heightened by the displacement of Kamsá speakers from their ancestral home, has made the need for documentation and description extremely urgent, and this grammar will perhaps be useful for the creation of pedagogical materials, as well. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. ii ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................x LIST OF MAPS ................................................................................................................. xi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................... xii 1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................1 1.1 Summary ......................................................................................................1 1.2 The Kamsá people and language .................................................................1 1.2.1 Location and history ........................................................................2 1.2.2 Culture..............................................................................................7 1.2.3 Relationship to other languages / classification attempts ..............11 1.2.4 Borrowing ......................................................................................12 1.2.5 Name of the language ....................................................................16 1.3 Language ecology and language vitality....................................................17 1.3.1 UNESCO’s nine factors .................................................................17 1.3.2 LEI .................................................................................................20 1.3.3 Language attitudes .........................................................................21 1.3.4 Education ......................................................................................22 1.3.5 The future of Kamsá ......................................................................23 1.4 Previous research on the language .............................................................23 1.5 Methodology ..............................................................................................26 1.6 Typological overview ................................................................................26 1.6.1 Phonetics and phonology ...............................................................27 1.6.2 Morphology and word classes .......................................................27 1.6.3 Word order and syntax ...................................................................27 1.6.4 Kamsá compared with Andean languages .....................................28 2 PHONOLOGY .......................................................................................................34 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................34 2.2 Segmental phonology.................................................................................34 2.2.1 Vowels ...........................................................................................34 2.2.1.1 Distribution of /u, e, o, a/ ...................................................35 2.2.1.2 The high front vowel [i] .....................................................36 2.2.1.3 The high central vowel /ɨ/ ..................................................38 2.2.1.4 Arguments against the high central vowel as a phoneme ..39 2.2.1.5 Vowel-glide sequences and glide-vowel sequences ..........39 2.2.2 Consonants .....................................................................................41 2.2.2.1 Voiceless stops /t, k/ ..........................................................42 2.2.2.2 Voiced stops /b, ⁿd, /ᵑɡ/ ......................................................42 2.2.2.3 The prenasalized voiced palato-alveolar affricate /ⁿdʒ/ .....43 2.2.2.4 Nasals /m, n, ɲ/...................................................................43 2.2.2.5 Liquids ...............................................................................44 iv 2.2.2.6 Voiceless fricatives and affricates /s, ts, ʂ, tʂ, ʃ, tʃ x/ .........44 2.2.2.7 Borrowed phones /d, ɡ, r/, and maybe /p/ ..........................45 2.3 Syllables structure ......................................................................................45 2.4 Stress ..........................................................................................................46 2.5 Loan phonology .........................................................................................47 2.6 Morphophonemics: phonological rules......................................................48 2.7 Orthography of Kamsá ...............................................................................49