Iñapari

Iñapari is an Arawak language spoken by four siblings in the village of Sabaluyoc along the Las Piedras river in the department of Madre de Dios, Peru. Speakers of Pano-Tacanan, Quechuan and other Arawakan languages also occupy this area in a context of extreme language shift towards Spanish (see Figure 1). In catalouges and other literature, Iñapari is often incorrectly classified as being (possibly) extinct (Aikhenvald 1999; Payne 1991) and most of the data about this language has been based on one grammatical sketch with accompanying Spanish-Iñapari and Iñapari-Spanish vocabularies (Parker 1995). The fieldnotes and audio recordings on which this resource is based have recently been published in the California Language Archive (Trigoso Silvano & Parker 2020-12) Two other short wordlists of the language are also available (Hart & Russell 1956; Stiglich 1904).

Archive of Iñapari Resources

In addition to these primary resouces a grammatical sketch of the language can be found here, and a preliminary dictionary of the language can be found here. 

Morphosyntactic comparison in Purus

Here is the information on the ongoing work Barrett Hamp and I are conducting on the subgruping and morphosyntactic reconstruction of the Purus subgroup of the Arawak languages. 

Abstract: 

The generally accepted Purus subgroup of the Arawak language family consists of at least three languages: Apurinã, Piro, and Iñapari (Matteson 1963; Valenzuela 1991). However, while it is clear these languages form a unique cluster within the Arawak family, the internal makeup of this subgroup remains unsettled (Facundes & Brandão 2011; Danielsen, Dunn & Muysken 2011; Walker & Ribeiro 2011; de Carvalho 2021). Payne (1991) suggests, based on lexical similarities, that there is no internal clustering of the languages of this subgroup. Aikhenvald (1999) confirms this based on geographical closeness as well as some similarities of broad morphosyntactic features. In contrast, da Silva Facundes (2000; 2002) suggests that Apurinã and Iñapari are more closely related within the subgroup based on phonological and some shared innovations, while Brandão and Facundes (2007) suggest Apurinã and Piro are more closely related. Lastly, de Carvalho (2021) presents reconstructed forms for the subgroup and the absence of shared phonological innovations among any of these languages. Without a systematic investigation of the shared morphosyntactic innovations our understanding of the development of the Purus languages is incomplete. This paper addresses this issue by comparing some morphosyntactic features among the Purus languages and by determining the consequent reconstruction and internal makeup of the subgroup. I argue that the morphosyntactic correspondences and shared innovations suggest that none of the languages former a closer cluster with any of the other languages supporting de Carvalho’s phonological analysis. This argument provides a more complete perspective on this language group as a way to add to our understanding of the development of the Purus languages.

1. Morphosyntactic comparison in Purus 2023 LSA presentation
2. Handout with data, references and abbreviations