Takanan languages

Résumé En

This chapter provides the first extensive survey of the linguistic characteristics of the languages of the small Takanan family, composed of five languages, Araona, Cavineña, Ese Ejja, Reyesano and Tacana, spoken in the Amazonian lowlands of northern Bolivia and southeastern Peru. To date, there have been very few general comparative works on these languages, apart from old studies based on scanty materials collected around the turn of the 20 th century (Rivet & Créqui-Montfort 1921; Schuller 1933), more recent studies restricted to the phonological domain (Key 1968; Girard 1971) and very small sketches listing a few noteworthy typological properties (Aikhenvald & Dixon 1999: 364-367; Adelaar 2004: 418-422). Drawing on data from the most recent fieldwork-based studies, which have appeared since the past two decades, the chapter offers a typologically and (when possible) historically informed presentation of their main linguistic features and of their most interesting characteristics. All the major levels of linguistic structure are presented, including phonetics and phonology, the word classes and their morphology, noun phrases, verbal and non-verbal predicates, main and dependent clauses and discourse.