Abstract

ECHEVERRI, Juan Álvaro  and  ROMERO CRUZ, Isabel Victoria. AGONY AND REVITALIZATION OF A LANGUAGE AND ITS PEOPLE: NONUYA FROM AMAZON. Forma funcion, Santaf, de Bogot, D.C. [online]. 2016, vol.29, n.2, pp.135-156. ISSN 0120-338X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/fyf.v29n2.60192.

Nonuya is one of the three surviving languages from the Witoto family that also includes Uitoto and Ocaina. The Nonuya had a large population that was also exterminated during the rubber period at the beginning of the 20^th century. Other neighboring groups managed to return to their ancestral territory after the rubber exodus. Only two Nonuya men returned and married women from other groups. Their offspring (approximately 100 people) lost their paternal language and adopted the language of other groups (Muinane and Andoque). Since 1992 this group decided to reaffirm their identity and form a new community. This paper presents a brief account of the history of this people, shows several advances in documenting their language and discusses some sociolinguistic aspects of the process of linguistic revitalization within the context of other languages spoken in the community. Additionally, the relation between Nonuya and the other two languages of the Witoto family is discussed and some preliminary results of its phonology and morphology, based on a documented corpus, are presented.

Keywords : Nonuya; Witoto linguistic family; linguistic revitalization; linguistic ecology; endangered languages.

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