| Itonama | |
| Nativename: | sihni pandara |
| States: | Bolivia |
| Region: | Beni Department |
| Ethnicity: | (2006) |
| Speakers: | 1 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| Ref: | e25 |
| Familycolor: | American |
| Family: | Language isolate |
| Script: | Latin |
| Iso3: | ito |
| Glotto: | iton1250 |
| Glottorefname: | Itonama |
| Map2: | Lang Status 20-CR.svg |
| Notice: | IPA |
Itonama is a moribund or extinct language isolate once spoken by the Itonama people in the Amazonian lowlands of north-eastern Bolivia. It was spoken on the Itonomas River and Lake[1] in Beni Department.
In Magdalena town on the western bank of the Itonama River (a tributary of the Iténez River), located in Iténez Province, only a few elderly people remember a few words and phrases.[2]
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Nambikwaran languages due to contact.[3]
An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)[4] found lexical similarities between Itonama and Movima, likely due to contact.
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |
| Mid | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||
| Low | pronounced as /ink/ |
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Post- alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||||
| Plosive/ Affricate | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||
| pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||||
| pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||||
| Liquid | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||||
| pronounced as /ink/ | ||||||||
| Semivowel | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||||
The semivowel pronounced as //w// is realized as a bilabial fricative pronounced as /link/ when preceded and followed by identical vowels.
Itonama is a polysynthetic, head-marking, verb-initial language with an accusative alignment system along with an inverse subsystem in independent clauses, and straightforward accusative alignment in dependent clauses.
Nominal morphology lacks case declension and adpositions and so is simpler than verbal morphology (which has body-part and location incorporation, directionals, evidentials, verbal classifiers, among others).[5]
Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Itonama.[1]
| gloss | Itonama | |
|---|---|---|
| one | chash-káni | |
| two | chash-chupa | |
| tooth | huomóte | |
| tongue | páchosníla | |
| hand | mapára | |
| woman | ubíka | |
| water | huanúhue | |
| fire | ubári | |
| moon | chakakáshka | |
| maize | udáme | |
| jaguar | ótgu | |
| house | úku |