Mʉ̃tẽã Documentation Project: Grammatical Lessons for Language Teachers and Students

Abstract

This thesis is part of a continuous documentation project directly requested by a Tukanoan language community called the Mʉ̃tẽã, located in the Vaupés region of Colombia. The purpose of this paper is to create lessons that can be translated and brought back to the community. The use of these lessons will be to explain the linguistic background of Mʉ̃tẽã in a way that allows teachers and students to generate their own examples per term. Lessons within this paper will be translated into Spanish, the conduit language of this group, and taught within workshops. For these reasons, the paper is written from a pedological approach rather than the format usually intended for academic linguistic audiences. This group of individuals in the workshops have exhibited enormous efforts in preserving their language, and the request for this kind of material shows their ongoing desire to do everything they can in revitalizing Mʉ̃tẽã. Within this paper, sample sentences and examples displayed within the lessons are derived from the field notes taken down by Dr. Wilson De Lima Silva and the Vargas-Acosta-Correa family. As the examples are listed, the corresponding word from the dictionary will be written directly beneath the sample with any other important identifying features. Besides the dictionary sentences, examples will also be drawn from the folk story The Creation of the Moon, as a story often lends itself to some of the more unique and specialized aspects displayed in the language. Each of those will also be labeled with according glossing number from DiRadio-Owens' thesis analysis.