Language name and locationː Kulina Pano, Amazonas, Brazil [Refer to Ethnologue]

语言名称和分布地区: 库利纳帕诺语, 巴西西北部亚马逊州库鲁卡河查瓦利溪谷原住民保留区

1. e'pa

2. da'bɨd

3. mɨ'tʂate 'tedtsɨk (litː ''a few on the hand'')

4. mɨ'tʂate 'tedtsɨk (litː ''a few on the hand'')

5. mɨ'tʂate 'tedi (litː '''all on the hand(s)'')

10. mɨ'tʂate 'tedi (litː '''all on the hand(s)'')

Linguist providing data and dateː Dr. David W. Fleck, Department of Linguistics, La Trobe University, Australia. July 20, 2011. Curuçá River (tributary of the Javari River), Brazil (Amazon rainforest); people captured by the Matses live in Peruvian and Brazilian Matses villages. 

提供资料的语言学家: Dr. David W. Fleck, 2011 年 7 月 20 日

Other comments: Kulina-Pano is an endangered language with 32 speakers in 130 ethnic population in Amazonas state: Vale do Javari Indigenous Territory; Aldeia Pedro Lopes village, Curuca river. Migrating to Tabatinga town near the confluence of the Amazon and Javari Amazon rivers, Brazil.

The Kulina-Pano language has only two true numerals, those for one and two.  The rest of the forms in the list above are complex, semantically transparent (3/4 = 'a few on the hand'; 5/10 = 'all on the hand(s)', and quite variable (variation exists among different speakers, an even among responses from the same speaker on different occasions; the forms for 3, 4, 5, and 10 are the most common responses given during elicitation).  Only the numbers one and two occur naturally in recorded texts, with numbers from 3 to 10 being expressed holding up fingers.  The term for 1 usually carries the diminutive suffix -tsök.

Note on dialects: There are three dialects: Kapishtana, Mawi and Chema.  The list above is from the Kapishtana dialect.  With respect to numbers, the Mawi and Chema dialects differ from the Kapishtana dialect only in that the term for hand is mɨ'kɨn.

Note on homophony: “Kulina-Pano” is a problematic term in that there are actually two languages called Kulina in the Panoan family (in addition to the Kulina language in the Arawan family). Following my terminology, Kulina of the Curuçá River is the obsolescent language described here.  Kulina of the Olivença is an extinct Panoan language once spoken in Brazil along the Amazon River near the town of São Paulo de Olivença, documented by Johann von Spix in 1820 and published in the following book:

Martius, Carl Friedrich Phil. von. 1867. Beiträge zur Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika's zumal Brasiliens. Leipzig: Friedrich Fleischer.

These two languages are in different branches of the Panoan family.  See the following paper for details. 

Fleck, David W.  2007.  “Did the Kulinas become the Marubos?: A linguistic and ethnohistorical investigation.” Tipití, Journal of The Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America, 5(2):137-207.

My paper contains an appended comparative list which includes Spix’s Kulina of Olivença numbers and the Kulina of the Curuçá River numbers listed in the table above; I reproduce here the part of the appendix containing the numbers:

Note: the form ytscha probably meant ‘many’

Sociolinguistic situation: The Kulinas of the Curuçá Rivers lived along various tributary streams of the Curuçá River in Peru.  The Matses raided and exterminated the speakers of all three of these dialects in the 1950s and 1960s, save several dozen women and children whom they captured, and a handful who escaped.  The captives who remain alive (about 30) live in Matses villages in Peru and Brazil where they speak only Matses; I have found only 5 who remember their language moderately well.  Of the ones who escaped, three men remain alive: one lives in the Brazilian town of Tabatinga where he speaks Portuguese and has forgotten most of his language; the other two men live with Matses on the Curuçá River.  Some Kulinas were in partial contact with Brazilians before the raids, but they never learned Portuguese or had enough contact to incorporate the Portuguese number system.  They sometimes use Spanish or Portuguese numbers when they speak in Matses, but the Kulina language simply never developed a way to express most numbers verbally.

Phonology: the list above is represented phonemically.  The table below lists the phonemes and major allomorphs.