Bora–Witoto languages

The bora-witoto languages (bora-witotoano or bora-huitoto) are a family of indigenous American languages made up of less than one ten languages. It has been estimated at 5,400 years of linguistic diversification, by glottochronological means.

Classification

Family languages

The Bora-Huitoto languages consist of the following languages:

• Bora family (bomber, boran, mirañano, miraña)
  • Bora (bora-miraña) Peru; Igará Paraná River, Amazonas, Colombia; Amazonas, Brazil
  • Muinane (bora-muinane) Cahuinarí, Amazonas, Colombia; Peru
  • Miraña River Caquetá, Amazonas, Colombia.
• Wito family (huitoto, huitotoano, witotó, witótoan, huitoto-ocaine)
  • Ocaina (okaina) Department of Loreto, Peru; Amazonas, Colombia
  • Nipode (nüpode, nüpode huitoto) Peru
  • Meneca (meneka, witoto muinane, minica huitoto, m)n)ca) Amazonas, Colombia; Peru
  • Murui (huitoto, bue, murui huitoto) Peru; Amazonas, Colombia; Amazonas, Brazil
  • Coeruna (koeruna) Amazonas, Brazil ? (†)
  • Nonuya (nonuña, nyonuhu, nonota, achiote, achote) Loreto, Peru; Peña Roja, Colombia
  • Coixoma (koihoma, koto, coto, orejón) Loreto, Peru ? (†)

(†) = dead language

Relationship with other languages

Andoque is a language normally classified as a language isolate. However, some authors have proposed that it is distantly related to Bora-Huitoto, which is why the hypothetical macrofamily lbora-witoto-andoque languages has been proposed, consisting of three branches:

I. Bora family

II. Wito family

III. Andoque

Outside of this proposal, the ASJP systematic comparison project finds the closest lexical closeness of the Bora-Witoto to the Zápara languages, however, such similarity could be due to accidental reasons or lexical borrowing and is not firm proof of relationship.

Linguistic description

Aschmann (1993) provided a phonological and lexical reconstruction of Proto-Bora-Witoto. A good reference on the grammar of the Bora language is Thiesen (1996) and on Witoto a standard reference is Minor and Loos (1963), also Wise (1999).

Lexical comparison

The following list compares the numerals in four Bora-Witoto languages: