Enxet language

Enxet
Southern Lengua
Énxet nempeywa
Pronunciation[eːnɬet]
Native toParaguay
RegionPresidente Hayes
Ethnicity5,840 Enxet Sur people (2002 census)[1]
Native speakers
3,800 (2002 census)[2]
Mascoian
  • Enxet
Language codes
ISO 639-3enx
Glottologsout2989
ELPEnxet Sur

Enxet, also known as Enxet Sur or Southern Lengua, is a language spoken by the Indigenous southern Enxet people of Presidente Hayes Department, Paraguay. It is one of twenty languages spoken by the wider Gran Chaco Amerindians of South America.[3] Once considered a dialect of a broader language, known as Vowak or Powok, Enxet (Southern Lengua) and Enlhet (Northern Lengua) diverged as extensive differences between the two were realized.[4]

Classification

Enxet belongs to the Enlhet-Enenlhet (aka Mascoian) language family, a small family of languages spoken in the Paraguayan region of the South American Gran Chaco.[4] Enxet is most closely related to its sister language Enlhet, based on some preliminary analysis, but a substantial historical analysis of the Enlhet-Enenlhet family has not yet been published.

History

Enxet and Enlhet were once considered dialects of a single language known as Lengua.[4] The Enxet language was first documented in the late nineteenth century by explorers from Spain.[5]

Language contents and structure

Enxet contains only three phonemic vowel qualities /e,a,o/, each requiring a certain length such to maximize distinction. Bilingual speakers of Spanish and Enxet purportedly utilize shorter spacing between vowels when speaking Enxet compared to Spanish.[6]

Phonology

Vowels

Front Central Back
Mid e eː o oː
Open a aː
Phoneme Allophone
/e/ [e], [i], [ɛ]
/o/ [o], [ʊ], [ɔ]

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
Plosive p t cʲ k q ʔ
Affricate tʃ
Fricative s h
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Lateral approximant l
fricative ɬ
Semivowel j w

/cʲ/ can also be heard as a regular palatal stop [c] or a palatalized velar stop [kʲ] in free variation.[7]

Further reading

  • Campbell, Lyle (2013). "Language Contact and Linguistic Change in the Chaco". Revista Brasileira de Linguística Antropológica. 5 (2): 259–292. doi:10.26512/rbla.v5i2.16268.
  • Messineo, Cristina; Cúneo, Paola (2011). "Ethnobiological Classification in Two Indigenous Languages of the Gran Chaco Region: Toba (Guaycuruan) and Maká (Mataco-Mataguayan)". Anthropological Linguistics. 53 (2): 132–169. doi:10.1353/anl.2011.0010. S2CID 143781977.
  • Hammarström, H. (2014). Basic vocabulary comparison in South American languages. The Native Languages of South America: Origins, Development, Typology, 56.
  • Kidd, Stephen W. (1995). "Land, Politics and Benevolent Shamanism: The Enxet Indians in a Democratic Paraguay". Journal of Latin American Studies. 27 (1): 43–75. doi:10.1017/S0022216X00010166.
  • Klein, Harriet Manelis; Stark, Louisa R. (1977). "Indian Languages of the Paraguayan Chaco". Anthropological Linguistics. 19 (8): 378–401. JSTOR 30027605.
  • Langer, Erick D. (2001). "Peoples of the Gran Chaco". American Ethnologist. 28 (1): 249–251. doi:10.1525/ae.2001.28.1.249.

References

  1. ^ ISO change request
  2. ^ Enxet at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  3. ^ Brenzinger, M. (2008). Language Diversity Endangered (1st ed.). Walter De Gruyter.
  4. ^ a b c Campbell, Lyle; Grondona, Verónica, eds. (2012). The Indigenous Languages of South America: A Comprehensive Guide. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
  5. ^ Quevedo, Samuel A. Lufone (1893). "Languages of the Gran Chaco". Science. 21 (524): 95. doi:10.1126/science.ns-21.524.95-b. JSTOR 1765332. PMID 17736781.
  6. ^ Elliott, John (2016). "For bilinguals, Enxet vowel spaces smaller than Spanish". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 140 (4): 3107. Bibcode:2016ASAJ..140Q3107E. doi:10.1121/1.4969702.
  7. ^ Elliott, John A. (2021). A Grammar of Enxet Sur. University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.
Enxet language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
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