Misumalpan languages explained

Misumalpan
Also Known As:	Misuluan
Region:	Nicaragua
Familycolor:	American
Fam1:	Macro-Chibchan ?
Glotto:	misu1242
Glottorefname:	Misumalpan
Child1:	Miskito
Child2:	Sumalpan
Map:	Misumalpan languages.svg
Mapcaption:	Historical (dotted) and current (colored) distribution of the Misumalpan languages

The Misumalpan languages (also Misumalpa or Misuluan) are a small family of languages spoken by indigenous peoples on the east coast of Nicaragua and nearby areas. The name "Misumalpan" was devised by John Alden Mason and is composed of syllables from the names of the family's three members Miskito, Sumo languages and Matagalpan.^[1] It was first recognized by Walter Lehmann in 1920. While all the languages of the Matagalpan branch are now extinct, the Miskito and Sumu languages are alive and well: Miskito has almost 200,000 speakers and serves as a second language for speakers of other indigenous languages in the Mosquito Coast. According to Hale, most speakers of Sumu also speak Miskito.

External relations

Kaufman (1990) finds a connection with Macro-Chibchan to be "convincing", but Misumalpan specialist Ken Hale considered a possible connection between Chibchan and Misumalpan to be "too distant to establish".^[2]

Classification

• Miskito – nearly 200,000 speakers, mainly in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region of Nicaragua, but including some in Honduras.
• Sumalpan languages:
  • Sumo languages – some 8,000 speakers along the Huaspuc River and its tributaries, most in Nicaragua but some in Honduras. Many of them have shifted to Miskito.
    • Mayangna - dominant variety of the Sumo family
    • Ulwa
  • Matagalpan
    • Cacaopera † – formerly spoken in the Morazán department of El Salvador; and
    • Matagalpa † – formerly spoken in the central highlands of Nicaragua and the El Paraíso department of Honduras

Miskito became the dominant language of the Mosquito Coast from the late 17th century on, as a result of the people's alliance with the British Empire, which colonized the area. In northeastern Nicaragua, it continues to be adopted by former speakers of Sumo. Its sociolinguistic status is lower than that of the English-based creole of the southeast, and in that region, Miskito seems to be losing ground. Sumo is endangered in most areas where it is found, although some evidence suggests that it was dominant in the region before the ascendancy of Miskito. The Matagalpan languages are long since extinct, and not very well documented.

All Misumalpan languages share the same phonology, apart from phonotactics. The consonants are p, b, t, d, k, s, h, w, y, and voiced and voiceless versions of m, n, ng, l, r; the vowels are short and long versions of a, i, u.

Loukotka (1968)

Below is a full list of Misumalpan language varieties listed by Loukotka (1968), including names of unattested varieties.^[3]

Mosquito group

• Mosquito / Miskito - language spoken on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and Honduras, Central America. Dialects are:
  • Kâbô - spoken on the Nicaraguan coast.
  • Baldam - spoken on the Sandy Bay and near Bimuna.
  • Tawira / Tauira / Tangwera - spoken on the Prinzapolca River.
  • Wanki - spoken on the Coco River and on the Cabo Gracias a Dios.
  • Mam / Cueta - spoken on the left bank of the Coco River, Honduras.
  • Chuchure - extinct dialect once spoken around Nombre de Dios, Panama. (Unattested.)
• Ulua / Wulwa / Gaula / Oldwaw / Taulepa - spoken on the Ulúa River and Carca River, Nicaragua.
• Sumu / Simou / Smus / Albauin - spoken on the Prinzapolca River, Nicaragua. Dialects are:
  • Bawihka - spoken on the Banbana River.
  • Tawihka / Táuaxka / Twaca / Taga - spoken between the Coco River and Prinzapolca River.
  • Panamaca - spoken between the Pispis River, Waspuc River, and Bocay River.
  • Cucra / Cockorack - spoken on the Escondido River and Siqui River.
  • Yosco - spoken on the Tuma River and Bocay River. (Unattested.)

Matagalpa group

• Matagalpa / Chontal / Popoluca - extinct language once spoken from the Tumo River to the Olama River, Nicaragua.
• Jinotega / Chingo - extinct language once spoken in the villages of Jinotega and Danlí, Nicaragua. (only several words.)
• Cacaopera - spoken in the villages of Cacaopera and Lislique, El Salvador.

Proto-language

Proto-Misumalpan
Familycolor:	American
Target:	Misumalpan languages

Below are Proto-Misumalpan reconstructions by Adolfo Constenla Umaña (1987):^[4]

No.	Spanish gloss (original)	English gloss (translated)	Proto-Misumalpan
1	abuela	grandmother	titiŋ
2	abuelo	grandfather	nini
3	acostarse	lie down	udaŋ
4	agua	water	li
5	amarillo	yellow	lalalh
6	árbol	tree	ban
7	arena	sand	kawh
8	atar	tie	widi
9	ayote	pumpkin
10	beber	drink (v.)	di
11	boca	mouth	ta
12	bueno	good	jam-
13	búho	owl	iskidi
14	cantárida		mada
15	caracol	snail	suni
16	caramba	interjection	anaj
17	casa	house	u
18	cocer	cook (tr.)	bja
19	cocerse	cook (intr.)	wad
20	colibrí	hummingbird	sud
21	cuarta persona	fourth person	-ni
22	chica de maíz	corn girl	sili
23	chile	chile	kuma
24	dar	give	a
25	dinero	money	lihwan
26	dormir	sleep	jabu
27	dos	two	bu
28	esposa	wife	maja
29	estar	to be	da
30	exhortativo-imperativo plural	plural exhortative-imperative verb	-naw
31	flecha	arrow
32	formativo de verbo intransitivo	formative intransitive verb	-wa
33	gallinácea silvestre
34	garrapata	tick	mata
35	garza	heron	udu
36	guardar	watch (v.)	ubak
37	guatusa	Dasyprocta punctata	kjaki
38	gusano	worm	bid
39	hierro	iron	jasama
40	humo	smoke
41	interrogativo	interrogative	ma
42	interrogativo	interrogative	ja
43	ir	go	wa
44		Spondias purpurea	wudak
45	lejos	far	naj
46	lengua	tongue	tu
47	luna	moon	wajku
48	llamarse	be called, named	ajaŋ
49	maíz	corn	aja
50	maduro	mature	ahawa
51	matapalo		laka
52	mentir	lie	ajlas
53	mujer	woman	jwada
54	murciélago	bat	umis
55	nariz	nose	nam
56	negativo (sufijo verbal)	negative (verbal suffix)	-san
57	nube	cloud	amu
58		Pinus spp.	kuh
59	oír	hear	wada
60	oler (intr.)	smell (intr.)	walab
61	oreja	ear	tupal
62	orina	urine	usu
63	perezoso	lazy	saja
64	pesado	heavy	wida
65	piedra	stone	walpa
66	piel	skin	kutak
67	piojo	louse
68	pléyades		kadu
69	podrido	rotten
70	meter	place, put	kan
71	pozol		sawa
72	presente (sufijo verbal)	present (verbal suffix)	ta
73	primera persona (sufijo)	first person (suffix)	-i
74	primera persona (sufijo)	first person (suffix)	-ki
75	red	net	wali
76	rodilla	knee	kadasmak
77	rojo	red	paw
78	sangre	blood	a
79	segunda persona (sufijo)	second person (suffix)	-ma
80	tacaní (tipo de abeja)	tacaní (type of bee)	walaŋ
81	tepezcuintle (paca)	Cuniculus paca	uja
82	tercer persona (sufijo)	third person (suffix)	-ka
83	teta	nipple	tja
84	teta	nipple	su
85	tigre	jaguar
86	tos	cough	anaŋ
87	tú	you (sg.)	man
88	verde	green	saŋ
89	viento	wind	win
90	yerno	son-in-law	u
91	yo	I	jam
92	zacate	grass	tun
93	zopilote	vulture	kusma
94	zorro hediondo	skunk	wasala

Bibliography

• Benedicto, Elena (2002), "Verbal Classifier Systems: The Exceptional Case of Mayangna Auxiliaries." In "Proceedings of WSCLA 7th". UBC Working Papers in Linguistics 10, pp. 1–14. Vancouver, British Columbia.
• Benedicto, Elena & Kenneth Hale, (2000) "Mayangna, A Sumu Language: Its Variants and Its Status within Misumalpa", in E. Benedicto, ed., The UMOP Volume on Indigenous Languages, UMOP 20, pp. 75–106. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts.
• Colette Craig & Kenneth Hale, "A Possible Macro-Chibchan Etymon", Anthropological Linguistics Vol. 34, 1992.
• Constenla Umaña, Adolfo (1987) "Elementos de Fonología Comparada de las Lenguas Misumalpas," Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica 13 (1), 129-161.
• Constenla Umaña A. (1998). "Acerca de la relación genealógica de las lenguas lencas y las lenguas misumalpas," Communication presented at the First Archeological Congress of Nicaragua (Managua, 20–21 July), to appear in 2002 in Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica 28 (1).
• Hale, Ken. "El causativo misumalpa (miskitu, sumu)", In Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca "Julio de Urquijo" 1996, 30:1-2.
• Hale, Ken (1991) "Misumalpan Verb Sequencing Constructions," in C. Lefebvre, ed., Serial Verbs: Grammatical, Comparative, and Cognitive Approaches, John Benjamins, Amsterdam.
• Hale, Ken and Danilo Salamanca (2001) "Theoretical and Universal Implications of Certain Verbal Entries in Dictionaries of the Misumalpan Languages", in Frawley, Hill & Munro eds. Making Dictionaries: Preserving indigenous Languages of the Americas. University of California Press.
• Koontz-Garboden, Andrew. (2009) "Ulwa verb class morphology", In press in International Journal of American Linguistics 75.4. Preprint here: http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/000639
• Ruth Rouvier, "Infixation and reduplication in Misumalpan: A reconstruction" (B.A., Berkeley, 2002)
• Phil Young and T. Givón. "The puzzle of Ngäbére auxiliaries: Grammatical reconstruction in Chibchan and Misumalpan", in William Croft, Suzanne Kemmer and Keith Denning, eds., Studies in Typology and Diachrony: Papers presented to Joseph H. Greenberg on his 75th birthday, Typological Studies in Language 20, John Benjamins 1990.

External links

• FDL bibliography (general, but search specific language names)
• Ulwa Language home page
• Ulwa Language Home Page bibliography
• Moskitia bibliography
• The Misumalpan Causative Construction – Ken Hale
• Theoretical and Universal Implications of Certain Verbal Entries in Dictionaries of the Misumalpan Languages – Ken Hale
• Andrew Koontz-Garboden's web page (with links to papers on Ulwa)

Notes and References

1. Hale & Salamanca 2001, p. 33
2. Hale & Salamanca 2001, p. 35
3. Book: Loukotka, Čestmír . Čestmír Loukotka . Classification of South American Indian languages . registration . UCLA Latin American Center . 1968 . Los Angeles.
4. Constenla Umaña, Adolfo (1987). "Elementos de Fonología Comparada de las Lenguas Misumalpas," Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica 13 (1), 129-161.