Documentation of Reyesano, an almost extinct language of Bolivia (South America)

Antoine Guillaume, Institut des Sciences de l'Homme

Project Details:

Individual Postgraduate Fellowship. Duration: 2004-2006. £55,124

Project Summary:

The project is to undertake linguistic documentation of Reyesano, the most endangered and least known language of the Takana family from the Amazonian rainforests of northern Bolivia and eastern Peru.

Takana languages are of tremendous interest for linguistics (similar to many Amazonian languages, they present many typologically unusual features) and also for the history of South American languages and populations.

Ongoing project description:

The present project is probably the last chance for this language to be documented before it disappears completely. The goal is to produce audio recordings, a collection of texts, a dictionary and a grammar.

Project outcomes:

Reyesano was said to be probably extinct without any record (apart from a 150 word list). The project made it possible to find fluent speakers of this language, to collect a sizeable amount of material, and to produce annotations and analyses of these data in order to allow future users to make sense of it. The analysis the grammatical structure of Reyesano has revealed interesting features, such as a peculiar hierarchical and inverse-like agreement system and an intriguing head-marking typological profile, two characteristics which are unique within the Tacanan family. The project has also been profitable for the Reyesano community, in reinforcing efforts being made by some community members in documenting and revitalizing their language, and in allowing for pedagogical materials to be created, such as a bilingual Reyesano-Spanish dictionary and a pedagogical grammar.