Kunza language

The language was spoken in northern Chile, specifically in the Chilean villages of Peine, Socaire (near the Salar de Atacama), and Caspana, and in southern Peru. The last Kunza speaker was found in 1949, although there are reports of some having been found in 1953 according to anthropologists. Loukotka (1968) reports a few speakers in Bolivia and in the village of Peine in Chile. ==Classification==

Kaufman (1990) found a proposed connection between Kunza and the likewise unclassified Kapixaná to be plausible; however, the language was more fully described in 2004, and the general consensus among linguists was that both languages are isolates. Unattested varieties listed by Loukotka (1968): • Atacameño of Bolivia – spoken in a small village on the frontier of Potosí Department, Bolivia, and Antofagasta Province of Chile • Lipe (Olipe) – extinct language once spoken south of the Salar de Uyuni, Potosí Department, Bolivia ==Language contact==

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Mochika, Kandoshi, Jaqi, Kechua, Mapudungun, and Uru-Chipaya language families due to contact. ==Phonology==

Consonants The vocabulary of Kunza is well-documented, but the phonetic realizations of lexical transcriptions are not so certain due to the widely differing systems of transcription that were used. Because of this, the accepted phonologic system for Kunza is tentative, and potentially even speculation. Even so, it is well known that the stops and affricates were distinguished between plain and glottalized (the latter being represented by a doubled consonant in some transcriptions, even in initial position). is only present in loanwords. and are not directly attested, but are presumed to have been present based on data collected in 1981. Velar and postvelar sounds are not consistently distinguished in the data. Vowels The use of doubled vowels in transcriptions suggest the existence of a contrast of length. Very few words begin with a vowel, almost all of them being non-lexical grammatical words. The only vowels possible in initial position are . ==Grammar==

Pronouns According to the work of Vaïsse, Peyró, Schuhmacher and Adelaar, the following schema can be proposed: Personal pronouns Note that corresponds to the relative with the plural marker . The forms with the added absolutive case suffix would be: . Possessive pronouns Note that the possessive marker is the suffix , which is added directly to the roots of the personal pronouns. San Román proposed a different way of marking possession, by means of prefixes added to the possessed object. The phonetic realizations are only hypothetical: According to this system, the possessive is marked in a way demonstrated in the following table, using the words (father) and (dog) as examples. Note that the final suffix is a copula. San Román also proposed a system of conjugation that is exemplified with the verb (to speak) in the following table: ==Sample text==

In 1867, Johann Jakob von Tschudi collected two versions of the prayer Our Father in Kunza. Version 1 Version 2 ==See also==