Andoque language


Andoque is a language spoken by a few hundred Andoque people in Colombia, and is in decline. There were 10,000 speakers in 1908, down to 370 a century later, of which at most 50 are monolingual. The remaining speakers live in the area of the Anduche River, downstream from Araracuara, Solano, Caquetá, Colombia; the language is no longer spoken in Peru. 80% of speakers are proficient in Spanish.

Classification

Andoque is no longer considered an isolate since Marcelo Jolkesky recognized the extinct Urequena language as closely related to Andoque.
Kaufman's Bora–Witótoan stock includes Andoque in the Witótoan family, but other linguists, such as Richard Aschmann, consider Andoque an isolate.
Jolkesky proposed a Macro-Daha family, which he classified as follows.
;Macro-Daha
However, Macro-Daha was rejected in Jolkesky, although Duho was still kept in Jolkesky.

Phonology

Vowels

There are nine oral vowels and six nasal vowels, which can each take high or low tone.

Consonants

Grammar

Classifiers

The subject noun does not appear alone, but is accompanied by markers for gender or noun classifiers. These noun classifiers are as follows:
Person markers include o-, ha-, ka- and kə-.
The adjectival or verbal predicate has a suffix which agrees with the subject: -ʌ for animate subjects and flexible or hollow ones; -ó for rigid or elongated ones; -i for others. Adjectival and verbal predicates are also marked with prefixes indicating mood, direction or aspect, and infixes for tense. The nominal predicate does not have a suffix of agreement nor a dynamic prefix, but it can take infixes for tense and mood, like the verb. Other grammatical roles appear outside the verb in the form of markers for case. There are 11 case suffixes.

Evidentials

In addition, the sentence has markers for the source of knowledge, or evidentials indicating whether the speaker knows the information communicated firsthand, heard it from another person, has deduced it, etc.
There is also a focus marker -nokó, which draws attention to the participants or indicates the highlight of a story. In the language there are means of representing action from the point of view of the subject or other participants, or from the point of view of an external observer.

Vocabulary

Landaburu (2000)

Landaburu gives the following Swadesh list table for Andoque:

Loukotka (1968)

lists the following basic vocabulary items for Andoque.