Continent: South America
Country: Brazil
Region: Sangradouro/Volta Grande, State of Mato Grosso, Brazil
Language Macrofamily: Bororoan, Macro-Jê
Contrasts Encoded: Consonants, Vowel Height
Depth of Encoding: Phonemic/Abridging
Content (Other):
Specialization:
Productivity:
Summary:
The Bororo language’s surrogate system has been documented by Brazilian authors, and thus most of the sources for it are in Portuguese. Aytai 1986 seems to be the only descriptive work of the language published in another language.
The whistled language transposes each sound directly from its uttered form, abridging consonants and vowels. Voiced obstruents are said to be devoiced in this process, and vowels are distinguished from each other by the tongue position in the moment of whistling, which allows the vowel height to be encoded.
There are no documented long sentence (longer than four words) where repetition does not happen. Duplicating a sound or sequence of sounds seems to be an enphrasing technique used by the Bororo to avoid ambiguity/homophony (Aytai 1979, p. 15).
Bibliography:
Aytai, D. (1986). Die Pfiff-Sprache der Bororó und Karajá. Bulletin de la Société Suisse des Américanistes, 50, 43-51.
Aytai, D. (1979). A Linguagem de assobio dos Índios Bororo e Karajá. Publicações do Museu Municipal de Paulínia, 7, 1-23.
Current Status: Reportedly in decline through generations (Aytai 1979, 23).
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