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Chibchan Languages

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Chibchan Languages

 

a language family of the Chibcha Indian tribes. The Chibchan languages are spoken in northeastern South America and southern Central America—in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and Costa Rica. They comprise the following language groups: Western Chibchan (subgroups Talamanca, Barbacoa, Guatuso, and Cuna); Pacific Chibchan (Isthmian and Colombian Chibcha); Inter-Andean Chibchan (Paez, Coconuco, and Popayanense); and Eastern Chibchan (Cundinamarca, Arhuaco, Central-American Chibcha). Some scholars combine the Chibchan languages with the Misumalpan languages (Miskito, Sumo, Matagalpa) and other languages to form a Macro-Chibchan family.

REFERENCE

Mason, J. A. “The Languages of South America.” In Handbook of South American Indians, vol. 6. Washington, D.C., 1950.
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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References in periodicals archive
Evidence for this comes from Cabecar, which, like Boruca, is a Chibchan language of Costa Rica.
Coconuts in the Americas
Chibchan languages have different strategies of personal reference marking on verbs, namely bound and unbound elements.
Languages are clustered together according to the subgrouping of Chibchan languages proposed by Constenla Umana (2012: 415-7).
The relationship between the patterns described in Table 1 and the subgrouping of Chibchan languages as proposed by Constenla Umana (2012: 415-7) is not always straightforward.
Thus, from a diachronic point of view, the situation of analytic and synthetic strategies of verbal person marking appears to be rather dynamic in some Chibchan languages.
Some Chibchan languages display alternating strategies for verbal person marking: verbal person can be indicated by either bound or unbound forms in Muisca, Teribe/Terraba, and Rama.
First, it has been argued that synthetic verbal person marking in Chibchan languages is not necessarily the result of deep-time retention (section 1).
In future studies, it would be worthwhile to trace the role of language contact as affecting the morphosyntactic properties of verbal person marking of different Chibchan languages. Based on cross-linguistic evidence, van Gijn (this volume) states that language contact often leads to a simplification, in terms of morphological complexity.
Chibchan languages. The Indigenous Languages of South America.
Development of transitivity in the Chibchan languages of Colombia.
The Chibchan Languages. Cartago, Costa Rica: Editorial Tecnologica de Costa Rica.
Morphosyntactic Properties of Chibchan Verbal Person Marking
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