UPDATE: The “Miraña” language in this recording is most likely the Cariban language Carijona (ISO 639-3: cdb, Glottocode: cari1297). Fernando O. de Carvalho noted that my transcriptions looked like Cariban vocabulary, and given the recording location in Colombia and forms reflecting a *p > h sound change, suggested Carijona as the language. Reviews of published Carijona data (Durbin and Seija 1973, among others), confirmed the identification.
In preparing some audio recordings of language elicitation in the hopes of making them in to some open educational resources, I started listening to and transcribing an elicitation session of “lengua miraña” in a set of recordings made in Colombia in 1989. At the moment I have no information about the woman who provides the Miraña words in this recording.
When I went to find some published sources to check my own transcriptions against, I could not find any that matched the vocabulary in the recording. Miraña is said to be a dialect of the Bora language, which itself is closely related to Muinane, yet none of the resources I found for Miraña, Bora, or Muinane shared much vocabulary with the word list I transcribed. That is, the forms I heard were usually not the forms in any published source. Please note that I don’t trust my ear on fine distinctions in central vowels or unrounded back vowels, so my schwas might not be shwas. All other sources are reproduced verbatim.
| Gloss | Broad transcription | Miraña (Seifart 2005) | Bora (Thiesen and Weber 2012) | Muinane (Walton, Walton & Buenaventura 1997) | Proto-Bora-Muinane (Aschman 1993) |
| armadillo | ə’təkə | dʒέ:-ɯ | cááteneyi, gáadaba, góói, nííquiba | ||
| grandfather | ‘ta:di | táʔdì | thàʔtí- | íitadi | |
| brother | ‘ε:nu, ‘εʔnu | -naʔbε | gáifííbo (brother of woman) | ||
| snake | ə’kəi | laʔba | ííñimyé, ííwacyoo | jíínimo | *xíinime |
| salt | ‘həmə | káná:ma | kháná:mè | ímuhu | |
| coca | i’ha:tu | íbí:i | jíibi | *xííbií(-ʔe) | |
| banana | ‘ha:ɾu | ɯ́hɨ | tááva íjehi | *ḯxɨ | |
| guama | ‘kha:ɾa:ʔu | tíisi (fruit) | |||
| eye | ε’nu:ɾu | ádʒɯ-ɯ | ʔátʃɯ́ | áállii | *(me)-ʔááǰïï |
| balay | ‘aβa | nítiba |
This is a random sample of the 38 items in the list, I didn’t cherry-pick just the divergent ones. I’m not used to finding this level of variation between related languages, let alone varieties that are purportedly closely related dialects of one language (Miraña and Bora). Only one of these ten (‘grandfather’) is a promising cognate with the rest, and two more (‘balay’ and ‘salt’) could potentially descend from the same form, but are nevertheless very distinct.
I would appreciate any help figuring out what’s going on here. Misidentification of the language? Specific terms being offered instead of generics (this could be what’s up with the terms offered for ‘snake’)? Is there actually more than one language in this list? Is there some reason why there might be a high degree of lexical replacement in these languages?
Ryan Sullivant 