| Hup | |
| Nativename: | Hupdë |
| Pronunciation: | pronounced as /[húpʔɨ̌d]/ |
| States: | Brazil |
| Ethnicity: | Hupd'ëh, Yohup |
| Date: | 2006–2007 |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Familycolor: | American |
| Fam1: | Naduhup |
| Lc1: | jup |
| Ld1: | Hup |
| Lc2: | yab |
| Ld2: | Yuhup |
| Glotto: | hupy1235 |
| Glottorefname: | Hup–Yuhup |
| Elp2: | 634 |
| Elpname2: | Yuhup |
| Notice: | IPA |
| Map: | Lingua hup.png |
The Hup language (also called Hupdë,[1] Hupdá, Hupdé, Hupdá Makú, Jupdá, Makú, Makú-Hupdá, Makú De, Hupda, and Jupde) is one of the four Naduhup languages. It is spoken by the Hupda indigenous Amazonian peoples who live on the border between Colombia and the Brazilian state of Amazonas. There are approximately 1500 speakers of the Hup language. As of 2005, according to the linguist Epps, Hup is not seriously endangered – although the actual number of speakers is few, all Hupda children learn Hup as their first language.
Although their territory was the target of forced transferrals throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, due to their isolation, the Naduhup were among the least affected, since they were protected by the geography of their land. They were also the target of several Catholic missions, though those ultimately failed, as the Naduhup refused to send their children to Catholic education centres.[2]
Contact with the Tucanoan people, also known as the River Indians, who live along the rivers rather than in the forests, has significantly impacted the Naduhup, both culturally and linguistically. Since before European contact, the Naduhup and Tukanoan peoples have engaged in trade, the Naduhup providing labour and hunted meats and the Tucanoan providing agricultural goods. However, the Naduhup are viewed as inferior by the Tucanoan, because of their linguistic and lifestyle differences. Because of this inequality, most Naduhup people can understand and/or speak a Tucanoan, while it is the opposite vice versa – very few, if any Tucanoan people speak Hup.[3]
Relatively few linguistic materials of Hup are available, due to the isolation of the Hupda. Incomplete vocabulary lists and dictionaries were established in 1955 (Giacone) and 1993 (Erickson and Erickson). The most complete descriptive grammar of Hup, A Grammar of Hup, was written by Patience Epps in 2005, was updated in 2008, and outlines Hup phonology, parts of speech, morphology, aspect, tense, modality, among many other features.
Hup is one of four languages in the Naduhup (Makú) family. Though Makú is the term most commonly used to refer to this language family, there is controversy over its usage, since it is also an ethnic slur, translating to “without language”, used by the Tukanoan towards the Naduhup. There has not been a consensus on a replacement term, although Epps proposed “Naduhup”, which combines the names of the four members of the language family - Nadëb, Dâw, Hup, and Yuhup.[4] Of the four members of the language family, Hup is most closely related to Yuhup, followed by Dâw, and then lastly by Nadëb. Hup and Yuhup are nearly mutually intelligible, sharing more than 90% of their basic vocabularies.
There are nineteen contrasting consonants in Hup, with the twentieth /p’/ occurring in the morpheme-initial position in only one word of only some Hup dialects. /j/, /g/, and /ç/ only appear in morpheme-final position, while all other consonants may appear in morpheme initial, medial, and final position. Hup has glottalized consonants of both stops and approximants which can be seen in the chart below.[5] This language also has nasal allophones of the voiced stops.
| Bilabial | Denti- alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | voiceless | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ |
| voiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| glottalized | pronounced as /link/ (pronounced as /ink/) | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Fricative | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Glide | plain | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| ejective | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
Adapted from Epps (2005), p. 40.
Hup contains a large segmental phonemic inventory, in comparison to the Tukanoan languages that neighbour it geographically. Hup vowels are composed of nine contrasting sounds, with no occurring diphthongs:[6]
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Open | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ |
However, these nine sounds occur only in non-nasal contexts. In nasal morphemes, there are only six distinct vowels:
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Open | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ |
Adapted from Epps (2005)[7]
According to Epps (2005), this indicates that the contrast between mid-vowels and high/low vowels are neutralised in nasal contexts. Nasalisation is morphemic at the syllable level and targets all segments – generally, every syllable is either fully nasal or fully oral.[7]
Hup tonality functions in what is called a word-accent system – there is a word-level tone contrast system; the contrast is restricted to one syllable per word, which is predictable and also exhibits other features of stressed syllables (greater intensity, longer duration, and higher pitch). There are two tones: rising and high, which only appear in nouns and adjectives.
| Hup Tones | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Rising | /cǎʔ/ [cǎʔ] "clump of roots" | ||
| High | /cáʔ/ [cáʔ] "box, nest" | ||
Nouns and verbs are open class, while adjectives are closed class. Nouns usually appear as arguments of clauses and can appear bare in the clause, while verbs must be inflected in some way. Hup is highly agglutinative and concatenative, with a high rate of synthesis and low rate of phonological fusion of morphemes. Therefore, its morphemes are easily segmented. Roots typically undergo compounding, while formatives are affixed or cliticised.[8]
| Subject | Object | Oblique | Possessive | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Downriver Hup dialects | Umari Norte dialect | |||||
| 1sg | ʔɑ̃h́ | ʔɑ́n | ʔɑ̃h́-ɑ̃t́ | nɨ̌ | nɨ̌h | |
| 2sg | ʔɑ́m | ʔɑ́m-ɑ́n | ʔɑ́m-ɑ́t | ʔɑ́mɨ̌h | ʔɑ́m-nɨ̌h | |
| 3sg | tɨ́h | tɨ́h-ɑ́n | tɨ́h-ɨ́t | tɨnɨ̌h | tɨh-nɨ̌h | |
| 1pl | ʔɨ́n | ʔɨ́n-ɑ́n | ʔɨ́n-ɨ́t | ʔɨnɨ̌h | ʔɨn-nɨ̌h | |
| 2pl | nɨ́ŋ | nɨ́ŋ-ɑ́n | nɨ́ŋ-ɨ́t | nɨŋɨ̌h | nɨŋ-nɨ̌h | |
| 3pl | hɨ́d | hɨ́d-ɑ́nhɨɾan (TD) | hɨ́d-ɨ́t[hɨɾɨt] (TD) | hɨdnɨ̌hhɨdɨ̌h [hɨɾɨh] (TD) yɨʔd’ə̌h-nɨ̌h | hɨd-nɨ̌h | |
Some nouns of Hup are semi-verbal, namely those which have to do with the passage of time, as well as periods of time, which are “inherently progressive and impermanent.”[10]
“Passage of time” words:
“Periods of time” words:
While these words belong to the noun class (they typically appear as arguments of a clause, and aspectual inflection is not required), they have verb-like qualities, such as occurrence in verbal compounds (which is normally restricted to only verbs):
The enclitic =wəd, derived from the word for “old man” wəhə́d, can be inserted as a respect marker when referring to spiritual beings or other humans. The feminine form of this is =wa.
This marker is usually used to refer to someone older or of higher status, though it can also be used to indicate someone to be feared, especially when used to refer to dangerous spirits.[11]
The usage of =wəd is also not necessarily respectful. The enclitic can also be affixed to children's names as a sign of affection, comparable to doing the same in English with the titles “Mister” or “Miss”.[12]
Negation is complex in Hup, as three separate strategies can be used to express negation in the language. The most common form of indicating negation is through the negator suffix [-nɨ́h] on verbal or adjectival predicates (and not nominal predicates, which are negated with the identity negation article). Secondly, predicative particle [pã̌] can be used with noun phrases to express specifically the negation of the existence of a referent. Lastly, the article [ʔǎp] expresses negation against an entity within a clause or the against entire clause itself, where the most common use of this particle is as an identity negator with nominal predicates.
Adapted from Epps (2005), p. 726
Adapted from Epps (2005), p. 738
Adapted from Epps (2005), p. 742
Negative responses to questions or refusals to offers in Hup require one of the strategies above; there is no general lexeme/morpheme for 'no' in Hup.
The most frequent and grammatically simplest word order in Hup is Subject (Agent), Object, Verb (SOV). Epps notes that the agent, the actor/argument of a transitive sentence, precedes the object and verb in the syntactic structure of Hup.
Adapted from Epps (2005), p. 168Adapted from Epps (2005), p. 180The verb-final construction of clauses in Hup, as seen above, is best characterized as AOV (agent, object, verb).
Hup is nominative-accusative. All subjects are unmarked, while the object and other noun cases are suffixed. Which suffix is used can depend on number, animacy, type of noun, and grammatical function, as shown in the table below. Case marking extends also to the noun phrase and relative clause, and the suffixes attach to the final constituent of the phrase.
| Grammatical function | Nouns | Nouns marked for number | Pronouns, demonstratives | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| S, A | -ø | -ø | -ø | |
| O (Direct object) | Human: -ɑ̌n, Animal: -ɑ̌n (optional), Inanimate: -ø | -ɑ̌n (Plural: -n’ɑ̌n) | -ɑ̌n | |
| O (beneficiary, recipient of ditransitive verbs) | -ɑ̌n | -ɑ̌n (Plural: -n’ɑ̌n) | -ɑ̌n | |
| Directional oblique | -an | |||
| Oblique | -V́t | -V́t | -V́t |
Adapted from Epps (2005), p. 143
Though the object case and directional oblique markers are almost identical phonologically, the only difference being the stress, directional oblique is mainly used to indicate direction, and sometimes, location, in which it coincides with oblique case.
Modification is a semantic operation and syntactic construction by which referents in a language can be modified. There are three types of modifier constructions, each of which are present in Hup: subcategorizing modification, selecting modification, and situating modification.
Subcategorizing modification includes property concept modification. In Hup, property concept modification is constructed using a juxtaposition strategy (zero strategy). As noted by Epps, adjectives (property concepts in a modifying relationship with a referent) follow the nouns they modify, which is in contrast to other types of noun phrases containing a modifier like numerals, demonstratives, and compounded nouns, which precede the noun.
Selecting modification includes numeral concept modification. In Hup, numeral modification is constructed using a juxtaposition strategy (zero strategy). Epps notes that numerals can occur both as nominal modifiers and as nominal heads in a noun phrase, and that as modifiers, they typically precede the noun using a juxtaposition strategy.
In Hup, object modification is constructed using a relational or flag strategy. An adposition marks a modifying relationship between an object concept and referent. According to Epps, expression of possession in Hup--a type of object modification relationship--involves the conjunction of two nouns and the postpositional particle [nɨ̌h], which indicates inalienable possession.
Situating modification includes deictic modification. In Hup, deictic modification, including the modifying relationship of demonstratives with a referent, is constructed using a juxtaposition strategy (zero strategy). In Hup, deictic modifiers and demonstratives precede the referent noun in a noun phrase.
Hup can construct complex coordinative sentences, which are sentences containing two clauses, typically grammatically symmetrical, and is achieved through coordination strategies. While various coordinative constructions exist in Hup, including conjunctive (additive coordination like English 'and'), disjunctive (alternative coordination like English 'or'), and adversative (contrastive coordination like English 'but'), the conjunctive coordinative construction is the most common complex coordinative construction in Hup.
Conjunctive relationships between two clauses in Hup are typically translated with 'and' in English. In other words, glossing of Hup will use the English term 'and' in the translation line for both clausal and phrasal coordination. The most common strategy in Hup for both phrasal and clausal coordination is the simple juxtaposition of the coordinated elements, or ‘zero strategy’. As seen in the examples above, the clauses are conjoined through juxtaposition, and in other words there is no overt marker(s) indicating coordination of the clauses. Conjunctive clausal coordination in Hup typically requires a juxtaposition strategy or zero-marked asyndetic strategy. In short, conjunctive clausal coordination in Hup uses no binder or coordinator in between coordinands, and clauses are juxtaposed together.
Additionally, this construction in Hup utilizes a de-ranking strategy. The majority of Hup’s clause-linking strategies involve a combination of a main clause and a dependent clause; the dependent-clause verb lacks inflection for tense-aspect-mode, and therefore the two clauses are imbalanced as the dependent clause is de-ranked. For example, the gloss from p. 805 depicts a main clause with telic aspect marking, while the dependent clause is not fully inflected with the telic aspect marking.
Like clausal coordination, the most common strategy in Hup for phrasal coordination is the simple juxtaposition of the coordinated elements, or ‘zero strategy’. No morphological indicator is required for the coordination of noun phrases in Hup.
The plurality marker for nouns is =d'əh and follows an animacy hierarchy: humans, animals, and inanimates. For humans, plural marking is obligatory, though exception is made for a non-specific referent.[13]
However, the marker is present for groups of people, which are considered conceptually plural.[14]
Animals are generally also marked for plurality, but differ in that the marker is not obligatory for groups of animals. As with humans, non-specific referents are also not marked.[15]
Inanimate objects are not marked for plurality and rely on numerals to indicate such. Plural inanimate entities are regarded with low importance, due to usually having low conceptual salience, and therefore are also almost always unmarked for number in discourse as well.[16]
Numerals in Hup are fairly etymologically unambiguous, which is very rare cross-linguistically. For the cardinal numerals 1-5, the forms likely derive from grammaticalized phrases, referring to the quantity of various salient phenomena for Hup people, with some variation between dialects. These dialectal variants will be labeled further as TD (Tat Deh), B (Barreira), UN (Umari Norte), and NF (Nova Fundação).The quantifier morpheme (-ʔǎp) is already integrated into the numerals '2' and '3' and may be used for the numerals 4+, but is not mandatory. For the cardinal numerals 6-20, there is much more variation, and their forms have not been lexicalized to the extent of numerals 1-5. Furthermore, through lexical borrowing, "virtually all speakers prefer Portuguese numerals for 6+," and for numerals 20+, Portuguese forms are exclusively used.[17]
| Numeral | Likely Etymology | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ʔayǔp (TD, B)ʔǽp (UN) | compare with demonstrative 'yúp' - 'that' (intangible) | |
| 2 | koʔǎp (B)kaʔǎp (TD, UN) kəwěg-ʔǎp (NF?) | 'eye-quantity' | |
| 3 | mɔ́twaʔǎp (B)mɔ́ɾaʔǎp (TD) mɔ́t-wɨg-ʔǎp (NF?) bab' pẵ (UN) | 'rubber.tree-seed-quantity''sibling NEG:EX' (UN) | |
| 4 | hi-bab'-nǐ (TD, B)bab'-nǐ (TD, UN) | '(FACT)-have_sibling/accompany.NMZ' | |
| 5 | ʔayup dapṹh (TD, B)ʔædapṹh (TD) nap'ṹh (variant B) ʔæp d'apṹh (UN) | 'one hand' |
| Abbreviation | Meaning | |
|---|---|---|
| AGAIN | repetitive aspect / topic-shift | |
| COOP | cooperative | |
| DECL | declarative | |
| DEP | dependent marker, topic marker | |
| DIR | directional oblique | |
| DYNM | dynamic | |
| EXCL | exclusive | |
| EXCL2 | exclusive (dialectical variant) | |
| FACT | factitive | |
| FLR | following marker | |
| IMP | imperative | |
| INCH | inchoative | |
| ITG | intangible | |
| NEG | negative (verbal) | |
| NEG:EX | negative existence | |
| NMZ | nominalizer | |
| OBJ | object | |
| PL | plural/collective | |
| POSS | possessive | |
| REP | reportive evidential | |
| RESP | respect marker | |
| VENT | ventive | |
| EMPH1 | emphatic (1st person) | |
| REP | repetitive aspect | |
| NONVIS | nonvisual experiential |
OBJ:objectRESP:respect markerITG:intangibleCOOP:cooperativeDIR:directional obliqueDYNM:dynamicFLR:following markerVENT:ventive