Ciguayo language
| Ciguayo | |
|---|---|
| Siwayo | |
| Native to | Dominican Republic |
| Region | Samaná Peninsula |
| Ethnicity | Ciguayos |
| Extinct | 16th century |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
0yv | |
| Glottolog | None |
Precolombian languages of the Antilles.
Ciguayo
Ciboney Taíno, Classic Taíno, Iñeri, and Shebaya were Arawakan, Karina and Yao were Cariban. Guanahatabey, Macorix, and Ciguayo are unclassified. | |
Ciguayo (Siwayo) was the language of the Samaná Peninsula of the island of Hispaniola (present day Dominican Republic) at the time of the Spanish Conquest. The Ciguayos appear to have predated the agricultural Taíno who inhabited much of the island. The language appears to have been moribund at the time of Spanish contact, and within a century it was extinct.[1][2]
Ciguayo was spoken on the northeastern coast of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Magua from Nagua southward to at least the Yuna River, and throughout the Samana Peninsula.[3]
Lexicon
Little is known of Ciguayo apart from it being a distinct language from Taino and neighboring Macorix. The only attested words are "gold", tuob (presumably [tuˈob] or [ˈtwob]) and a few place names. In particular, Quizquella (presumably [kisˈkeja]) 'very mountainous', was attributed to Ciguayo by Granberry and Vescelius (2004), but there is no reason to connect it to it aside from the non-Taíno phonetic appearance.[4] This makes it unlikely that the language is Arawakan or Cariban, as languages of those families have simple V and CV syllable structures even in loanwords that were originally CCV or CVC. Granberry & Vescelius (2004) speculate that the closest parallels might be in the Tolan languages of Honduras.[3]
Granberry & Vescelius (2004) analyze the morphemes of tuob 'gold' and Quizquella 'very mountainous' as:
- to-w-b(e) 'gold'
- to- (cf. Eastern Tol t 'heavy(ness)')
- -w- (cf. Eastern Tol -w- 'its')
- -b(e) (cf. Eastern Tol -pe 'stone')
- kʰis-kʰe-ya 'very mountainous'
- kʰis- (cf. Eastern Tol kʰis 'hard rock')
- -kʰe- (cf. reduplication in Eastern Tol)
- -ya (cf. Eastern Tol yo 'tree')
See also
References
- ^ Granberry, Julian (2012). "Lenguas indígenas del caribe" (PDF). Cuba Arqueológica. 5 (1): 5–11.
- ^ Guitar, Lynne (2005). "Following Linguistic Trails across Half a Millennium Provides New Answers to Old Questions". H-LatAm (H-Net).
- ^ a b Granberry, Julian; Vescelius, Gary (2004). Languages of the Pre-Columbian Antilles (PDF). Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0-8173-5123-X.
- ^ Adelaar, Willem F. H. (April 2009). "Languages of the Pre‐Columbian Antilles . By Julian Granberry and Gary S. Vescelius. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004. Pp. 160". International Journal of American Linguistics. 75 (2): 275–278. doi:10.1086/598773. ISSN 0020-7071.