Apalaí/Aparai, a Cariban language of Brazil, French Guiana and Suriname

Language	Apalai
Depositor	Fernando Orphão de Carvalho
Affiliation	Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (MN/UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Location	Brazil
Collection ID	0729
Grant ID	GLB0024
Funding Body	Glottobank
Collection Status	Collection online
Landing Page Handle	http://hdl.handle.net/2196/b7e06e5e-53fd-4f01-82e9-8b5ad9cb9152

 

Summary of the collection

This collection derives from a joint grant by the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution (DLCE) at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and ELDP. This first installment is limited to audio recordings of bilingual (Brazilian Portuguese-Apalai) elicitation sessions focused on vocabulary. Basic vocabulary, numerals and kinship terms were elicited from three adult native speakers of Apalai (one male and two female speakers). The recordings were made in Macapá, Brazil, in November of 2023. The collection will soon be expanded by the inclusion of further recordings, both of elicitation sessions and of oral narratives.

 

Group represented

The Apalai (also Aparai) are one of the Cariban-speaking groups historically located in the rivers Paru do Leste, Maicuru, Jari and Curuá, in the left (north) bank of the Amazon River. Politically, the region comprises today the northernmost territory of the State of Pará, Brazil. The history of the Apalai is closely interwoven in a complex, and not always peaceful, manner with that of the Wayana, speakers of another, and unintelligible, Cariban language. While in Brazil many ethnic Wayana are nowadays speakers of Apalai, the situation is reversed among the few Apalai living in French Guiana. Like other ethnographically described groups in lowland South America, the modern Apalai result from the coalescence and fusion of once politically-independent, yet culturally close, regional groups. Nowadays, the vast majority of Apalai speakers reside in two large, multi-ethnic indigenous reservations (Terras Indígenas) in northern Brazil: the Parque Indígena do Tumucumaque, and the Terra Indígena Rio Paru D’Este. In terms of their general cultural profile, the Apalai follow the pattern of other Guianese groups: Corporate or descent groups (like lineages or clans) are absent, and the traditional patterns of residence and social organization privilege small, dispersed settlements, usually formed by descendants of a village chief, which is usually its founder. Since post-marital residence tends to be uxorilocal, these groups also include the son-in-laws of the village head. In terms of subsistence profile, the typical regional pattern of swidden agriculture (or shifting cultivation), with an emphasis on manioc, as well as hunting and fishing is also followed by the Apalai.

On the ELAR Map, the collection has been geographically referenced to the city of Macapá. Although the recordings were made in this city, and even though many Apalai speakers can in fact be found there throughout the year, this is not “their territory”. Like other indigenous peoples in Brazil, the Apalai live in villages located in indigenous reservations, in this specific case, the Parque do Tumucumaque and the Paru d’Este reservations. A reference point is one specific village called Bona, which is supplied with government facilities and an airstrip for the landing of small aircraft. The village’s coordinates are: 1.218468818199777, -54.6546185875225.

 

Language information

Apalai is spoken by the approximately 650 ethnic Apalai, and, also, as a second language by members of other groups such as the Tiriyó and Wayana. The language remains under-described, and most of the work published and unpublished work has been authored by Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) members, notably Edward Koehn and Sally Koehn (Koehn 1975, Koehn & Koehn 1971, 1986, 1995). Later, a couple of publications were authored by Eliane Camargo (Camargo 2001, 2002).

 

Special characteristics

To our knowledge, this is the first archive of language material on Apalai available online. Though limited at the present moment to audio recordings of vocabulary elicitation sessions, the collection will soon be expanded by the inclusion of recordings of narratives, as well as additional elicitation sessions.

 

Collection contents

In its initial version, the collection contains only the audio recordings of the elicitation sessions for the Lexibank, Numeralbank and Kinbank databases. The elicitation was bilingual, using Brazilian Portuguese as the intermediate language, and three native speakers of the language, one adult male and two adult females, were recorded.
The collection will soon be expanded with further elicitation sessions, narratives of autobiographical and mythical significance, and by including additional speakers.

 

Collection history

The recordings making the first installment of the collection were recorded during the month of November, 2023, at the city of Macapá, Brazil. The project from which the recordings originate was financed by a joint grant of the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution (DLCE) at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in collaboration with the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

 

References

Camargo, Eliane. 2001. Aspects de la morphologie apalai dans les constructions d’appartenance. Amerindia 26(27). 123-146.

Camargo, Eliane. 2002. Léxico bilingüe aparai- português / português- aparai. (Languages of the World: Dictionaries, 28.) München: Lincom Europa. 142pp. (mgl. anderer Bd. in dieser Serie, da Nr. 28 lt. LINCOM Homepage schon “Tuvan dictionary” (Camargo-Titel ist nicht auf LINCOM Homepage)).

Koehn, Sally S. 1975. Apalaí kinship and social behavior. Arquivos de Anatomia e Antropologia 1. 79-108.

Koehn, Edward & Sally Sharp Koehn. 1971. Fonologia da língua Apalaí. In Sarah C. Gudschinsky (ed.), Estudos sôbre línguas e culrturas indígenas, 17-28. Brasília: SIL.

Koehn, Edward & Sally Koehn. 1986. Apalai. In Desmond C. Derbyshire and Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds.), Handbook of Amazonian Languages, 33-127. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. doi: 10.1515/9783110850819.33.

Koehn, Edward H. & Sally S. Koehn. 1995. Vocabulário básico Apalaí-Português: Dicionário da língua Apalaí. 1era ed. edn. Brasilia: Sociedade Internacional de Lingüística. iii+163pp.

 

Acknowledgement and citation

To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:
de Carvalho, Fernando Orphão. 2024. Apalaí/Aparai, a Cariban language of Brazil, French Guiana and Suriname. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/7db03c8a-ce09-4e32-9f64-a26b83106a8b. Accessed on [insert date here].