Production of a lexicon
(Spanish-Pisamira) and audio files of oral tradition stories in Pisamira:
an endangered language of the Eastern Tukanoan subfamily
Iveth Rodríguez
Universidad del Valle / Cali-Colombia
Introduction
Pisamira language, a member of the Eastern Tukanoan
subfamily, is spoken by a reduced group settled in Yacayacá, a small village
located along the Vaupés River in Colombia. According to the UNESCO Atlas of
the World's Languages in Danger, this language is critically endangered
having only 25 speakers. Nevertheless, recent ethnographic information
collected during my last field trip reveals that the number of speakers reported
by the UNESCO is currently much more reduced. I report a number of 58
Pisamira members whereas there are barely 12 active speakers living in Yacayacá
?a single family consisting on seven adults and five kids? who use the language
in all contexts and situations.
Historically, this group (as has been the case for
many groups in the Colombian Amazon region) has faced many socio-cultural
changes due to a large extent of evangelical missions, rubber and mining
exploitation, drug traffic, guerrillas? invasion, among others.
Undoubtedly, this reality has meant a devastating
reduction on the number of groups and group members ?as the case of Pisamira?
as well as the loss of their language, their ancestral knowledge and an
enormous change in their sociocultural practices. For example, they no longer
live in malokas
or the ancestral communal longhouses. Instead
of that, they have built small houses where they live only with the nuclear
family which has produced the loss of the traditional practices that used to
take place in the maloka.
In fact, the elders remember have lived in the last maloka of
Pisamiras ?located in their ancestral land called ɰãˈʧĩnãˌbuɾo? between the basins of caño
Pindaíba and caño Pacú. They recall
that the longhouse was the core of some traditional collective rituals such as
story-telling, festivals and ceremonies; all of those activities have been
disappearing over the years due to the dispersal of the group.
Regarding the sociolinguistic context, Pisamiras live in the multilingual
area of Vaupés and they participate in the marriage system of linguistic
exogamy. Before moving to Yacayacá, they used to live closer to Yurutí people
and both of them used to intermarry; as a result, they would speak Pisamira,
Yurutí, Siriano and other languages of the closer
groups. Nowadays, this has enormously changed considering that they live
surrounded mainly by Cubeos with whom they have established new marriage
relationships. Since Cubeo language is dominant on the region, most of Pisamira
families have neglected their own language and they only use Cubeo in the
everyday life; this is understandable taking into account that they constitute
a minority group. Still, they acknowledge understanding Pisamira but not
speaking it or teaching it to their children. Therefore, the critical endangerment of Pisamira language, as well
as the lack of effectiveness of the speakers to transmit it to the new generations raise the
need for an urgent documentation work before this language ?the only means to transmit
their culture? goes silent.
|
Ancient longhouses
used to be the dwelling of the groups in the Vaupés. Maloka Ipanoré
?Mitú. |
|
Background
Pisamira is a poorly documented language; there is neither
a grammar nor a dictionary and the only available study attempting to describe
it is definitely sketchy. With this in
mind, in August 2011 I began fieldwork in the community of Yacayacá, the only
home of the Pisamira people, as a part of the research for my BA project whose
main objective is to describe the nominal morphology of the language. During my
fieldwork, I had the good fortune of interacting with all Pisamiras living in
Yacayacá. The consultants I worked with
were very skilled due to their earlier experience working with linguists.
|
Elicitation session with Martín Londoño, one of the
most skilled consultants living in Yacayacá. |
Alexander and Martín Londoño describing objects in
their language. |
On the one hand, Martín Londoño worked with a linguist
from Instituto Caro y Cuervo and from his work resulted the only study about
Pisamira language published in 2000: Bases
para el estudio de la lengua Pisamira. On the other hand, Félix Londoño as a teacher
has a lot of experience, and he has also worked with some linguists of the Summer Institute of Linguistics when the missionaries have tried to develop didactic materials
to teach languages in the indigenous schools of the Vaupés. Finally, the elder
Gabriel Madero is an authority on the language and he is the bearer of all the
traditional stories and tales about the group. His family is recognized for
having more children than any other Pisamira family and for being the only ?out
of the four Pisamira families? that uses the language every day.
While conducting my research, I noticed the active
participation of the speakers in the sessions of elicitation, as well as a
great interest in keeping the recordings and the transcriptions in order to
share them with other Pisamiras who do not speak the language. Both Martín and
Félix Londoño remarked that they never received neither feedback nor the final
results from the earlier projects they had participated with SIL and Instituto Caro y Cuervo. Thus, they wanted to have
copies of the materials I was gathering about their language and culture.
Pisamira active speakers constantly expressed the need to stimulate language
learning and use among those who do not speak, especially children who only use
Cubeo or Tucano as their first language.
Indeed, Pisamira elders fear the possibility that all their knowledge, including the
language, may be lost when they are gone. For that reason they were very
motivated by the fact that their language was being written down and they even
tried to write some anecdotes using the Spanish alphabet and adapting it to the sounds of their own language. The data I have collected
during my fieldtrips represent the largest existing amount of recordings of the
Pisamira language and culture with linguistic and ethnohistorical
purposes. In addition to the linguistic aspects of my research I was also
interested in collecting cultural, historical and ethnographic information
about the group. I have collected
information about every Pisamira family, their marriage relationships with
other Tukanoan groups, their degree of multilingualism and their educational
level.
After my first fieldtrip, I made copies of some of the audio recordings
and I personally handed them to the leaders from the Pisamira community. With the GBS support, I have planned to
prepare a selected compilation in audio and video with Pisamira?s
stories and, at the same time,
a booklet with an organized lexicon that has resulted from my fieldtrips. These
materials will be put in the elementary school of the community and will be
distributed to each Pisamira family.
The GBS-funded project
The main goal of this proposal was to produce a lexicon Spanish-Pisamira and to create an
archive of audio and video with a compilation of traditional stories to be
available for Pisamira people in their community. In order to do so, I needed to carry out a 4th
fieldtrip that was initially planned
for early January 2013, but due to an unexpected situation it was delayed so I could finally travel to Yacayacá in March 2013 where I worked for a
month with Pisamiras; translating some of the stories and gathering additional
linguistic, ethnographic and sociolinguistic data.
Pisamira speakers were very enthusiastic about the idea
of creating the lexicon and gave me some ideas of how they would like the
booklet to be organized. The elders suggested that it should contain some
pictures and illustrations in order to show the way their reality is
represented and I agreed that I was a good idea. I took some pictures of their
traditional crafts and foods, elements of subsistence and daily life
activities. Currently, the lexicon is
being prepared, the audio and video files are being put on edited DVDs; so by
the beginning of May 2013 the booklet will be printed and sent ?along with the
DVDs? to the community.
The materials produced with the support of the GBS are
intended mainly to fulfill the needs and interests of the speakers to have
access to the data collected and it is a personal hope that this materials will
serve to stimulate language learning and use among Pisamira members who are not
active speakers.
Funding
The GBS grant provided fieldwork funding including all
the expenses for compensating the consultants who worked with me during the
month I stayed in the community, the costs of producing the materials and
distribution fees. The funds considered by the grant have been spent as
follows:
|
Fieldwork Expenses |
|
Cali-Bogotá-Mitú-Yacayacá |
? 510 |
|
? 400 |
|
Subtotal: ? 910 |
|
|
Materials Production Fees (In
preparation) |
|
|
? 450 |
|
? 80 |
|
Subtotal: ? 530 |
|
|
TOTAL: ? 1.440 |
|
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Pisamira people from whom I have learnt not only
their language but many of their ancestral traditions, stories about their
origins and material culture. Working
with them has meant a great opportunity for me to enrich my academic experience
in documenting an endangered language and it will eventually contribute to
further studies on Eastern Tukanoan languages and culture. On behalf of the
Pisamira people I want to thank the invaluable support of the Gesellschaft für Bedrohte Sprachen because
without this grant such important project would not have been possible.
References
Ardila, O. (1989). Diversidad Lingüística y multilingüísmo
en los grupos Tucano del Vaupés. Forma y Función, N° 4, p. 23-34. Universidad
Nacional de Colombia. Departamento de Lingüística.
González, M. (1997). ¿Se extingue ?la gente de red?, su lengua y
su cultura? Condiciones sociales de la lengua Pisamira. En Pachón, X. &
Correa, F. Lenguas Amerindias:
Condiciones Socio-lingüísticas en Colombia. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y
Cuervo.
_____________ (2000). Bases para el estudio
de la lengua Pisamira. En M. S. González de Pérez & M. L. Rodríguez de
Montes (eds.). Lenguas Indígenas de
Colombia. Una visión descriptiva.
Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo.
Pineda, R. (2000). El
Derecho a la Lengua. Una historia de la política lingüística en Colombia.
Estudios Antropológicos N° 4. Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes.
Sorensen, A. P. (1967). Multilingualism in
the Northwest Amazon. American Anthropologist, 69: 670?684. American Anthropological Association.
UNESCO. Atlas of the World?s Languages in Danger. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/endangered-languages/
(2012, Febrero 13)
Additional
Photographs
|
Dabucurí festival is the
celebration of the abundance of food. |
Traditionally body/face
painting is used for the festivals |
|
Pisamira dancer preparing
the instruments for the festival |
Carrizo dancing in the ?dabucurí? festival
|
|
Martín Londoño taught me
the techniques for making the traditional strainers |
Pisamiras still preserve
the ancestral knowledge of making some crafts and elements of subsistence |
|
Some of the instructions
and techniques for making elements of their material culture were videotaped
and will be included in the DVD |
The name of the group comes
from this fishing net called ?pisá? in lingua Geral |
