A grammar of Yukuna, an Arawak language of Colombian Amazonia

  Contact person

Magdalena LEMUS SERRANO

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Scientific framework and objectives

Yukuna is an understudied language from the North-Amazonian branch of the Arawak language family, the largest in number of languages and the most geographically widespread in South America. It is the language of the Yukuna and Matapi peoples, residing in various villages along the banks of the Mirití-Paraná river in Colombian Amazonia. Yukuna has approximately 1000 speakers, and it is still widely used by all generations within their traditional territory. This doctoral dissertation, funded by Labex Aslan and supervised by Françoise Rose (DR2, CNRS), aims at describing the morphology and the syntax of the language, within a functionalist approach. The preceding stage of this research project was devoted to the constitution of a large corpus of the language, collected during 2 months of fieldwork and funded by ELDP. This corpus is accessible online at the Endangered Language Archive website, and it was the basis of a Master’s thesis on the phonology of Yukuna, and the social and cultural context in which it is spoken.

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  Financial support

• Contrat Doctoral ASLAN
  A grammar of Yukuna, an Arawak language of Colombian Amazonia
  Labex ASLAN - Université de Lyon
  2016-2019
• Financements de terrain ASLAN WP2
  Linguistic surveys for the description of Yukuna (Arawak, Colombia)
  Labex ASLAN - Université de Lyon
  2016 ; 2017

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