A note on Opon-Carare

Author(s): Marshall Durbin and Haydée Seijas

Source: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Bd. 98, H. 2 (1973), pp. 242-245
Published by: Dietrich Reimer Verlag GmbH
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25841439
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 A note on Opon-Carare
By
Marshall Durbin

Haydee Seijas

Opon-Carare were once spoken on the Carare River area in central

western Colombia, forming a linguistic and geographic extension of the Yupa
(Carib) languages spoken in the Sierra de Perija on the Colombian-Venezuelan
borders2). There are probably no remaining speakers of Opon-Carare. In 1944
Pineda Giraldo and Fornaguera (1958) found a total of five Indians, survivors
of the groups that inhabited the Opon-Carare area. Of these, one was a woman
of approximately 55 years of age who has probably died since; another, a man
of approximately 25 years old, may still be living. In her survey of Colombian
Indians Dussan de Reichel (1965) makes no mention of living Opon-Carare.
The materials for the two languages are relatively scarce. There are only
three published sources: Lengerke (1878a and 1878b) has separate short vocab
ularies for Opon and Carare; Pineda Giraldo and Fornaguera (1958) have
published a fairly extensive and phonetically detailed vocabulary for Opon
Carare3). Inspection of these materials reveals that although the vocabularies
are closely related, there are minor differences among them. Pineda Giraldo
and Fornaguera's (1958) Opon-Carare vocabulary is closest to Lengerke's
(1878a) Opone; while Lengerke's (1878b) Carare seems closest to his Opone.

Phonological Interpretation of Opon-Carare

The following phonological interpretation is based upon Pineda Giraldo
and Fornaguera's (1958) data. These authors give the following information
regarding the phonetic conventions used in their transcriptions:
oe open o, mid series
h indicates that the preceding vowel is long, with the glottis closed,
and slightly aspirated
a normal mid a
e normal vowel
final relaxed vowel (e)
1) Alternate names for these groups are, Opone for Opon; Karare, Naura, Nauracoto, and possibly
Carate for Carare. It should be noted that Loukotka (1968: 219) places Naura within the Pijao group.
Because there is little or no data for the languages in that group, we suggest leaving them as unclassified
(see Durbin and Seijas 1972a).
2) Guane (Guanero, Guanero) was once spoken in an area neighboring that of the Opon and Carare,
and, probably on the basis of geographical proximity, has been placed by Loukotka (1968: 220) in the
Opone group along with Opone and Carare. Because there are only two words recorded for Guane, papa
and papale, both meaning 'father' (Gumilla 1745: 48), we suggest that Guane should remain unclassified.
For Hacaritama, another language listed by Loukotka (1968: 220) within his Opone group, there are only
two known sources (Paez 1936 and 1946). Although the titles of Paez' works mention Motilon (a term
commonly used to refer either to the Western Carib Yupa languages of the Sierra de Perija, or to Bari,
a language of possible Chibcha affiliation spoken to the south of the Yupa area), the material is
definitely Arawak, and closely related to Goajiro (Paez 1946).
In addition to Opone, Carare, Hacaritama and Guane, Loukotka (1968: 220) lists within his Opone
group the following languages for which no data exist: Yariguf, Xiriguana, Carate, Corbago, Chinato,
Zorca, Cariquena and Capacho.
3) Lengerke (1878 a and 1878b) has been wholly or partially reprinted in Goeje (1909), Loukotka
(1968: 221), Ortiz (1965: 230?231), Brinton (1901: 353), Rivet (1943), As far as we know, Pineda Giraldo
and Fornaguera (1958) has not been reprinted. For Opone there are unpublished data by Fornaguera
(n. d.) to which we have had no access.

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 Marshall Durbin and Hay dee Seijas: A note on Opon-Carare 243
r voiced alveolar fricative
y voiced palatal fricative
j palatal semiconsonant
: neutral vowel. Pronounced as in English but (b:t)
ii open u, mid series
n corresponding to Spanish n
sh voiceless palatal affricate
= halt in the voice.
In addition to the above, Pineda Giraldo and Fornaguera also transcribe
p, t, k, b, d, g, s, m, n, x, w, i, u, o, ii, oo, aa, uu, ee,', and -. On the bases of the
above inventory and their distribution in the corpus, we make the following
phonemic interpretations:
1. A vowel system of /i, e, a, o, u, 9/, where the last phoneme is a mid
central vowel which perhaps includes a high back unrounded variant found
in most Carib languages. Lengthening occurs with all the vowels except hi,
and in many cases carries primary stress /'/ but not always, as in the case of
siidd-id., 'yam'. We interpret the sound that Pineda Giraldo and Fornaguera
transcribe as . to be either a high central vowel [ ], or a lower high front
vowel [I]. It only occurs in the sequences -id. or -d., morphemes indicating
possession, and appears to be in contrast with HI but never with /e/; in conse
quence we consider this vowel to be a variation of the latter.
oe, a lower mid back vowel [o] only occurs in two words; we interpret it
as a variant of lol. ii also occurs only twice and we consider it to be a variant
of MI. ' is interpreted as primary stress /'/ which occurs in any syllable in
the lexical item, and with any vowel, long or short, except /a/.
Vowel combinations aii, au, and ou are considered to be vowel plus /w/;
ai, oi, ei, iii and ae are interpreted as vowel plus /y/. ua is interpreted as /wa/;
while ua as well as oa following consonants are interpreted as vowel plus Iwl
plus vowel. It should be noted that nasalized vowels, although common both
contrastively and non-contrastively in other Carib languages, are not record
ed for Opon-Carare.
2. p, t, k, b, d, g, s, sh, m, n, n and r are interpreted as /p, t, k, b, d, g, s, s,
m, n, fi, r/, respectively. It is unusual for Id/ and Igl to occur contrastively in
Carib languages, but they appear to do so in these data. For instance, Igl
often precedes /a/, but /k/ also appears in this position.
3. Ihl is posited on the bases of two variants, [x], a voiceless velar frica
tive always occurring before lol and [h], a voiceless glottal fricative generally
occurring after long vowels.
4. lyl is posited on the bases of y, a voiced palatal fricative [z?]; i, a high
front non-syllabic vowel [i] always following another vowel; and /, a palatal
semivowel, [y]. It is also possible to consider sh [s] as a variation of In I since
its occurrence is mostly, though not always, in initial position.
5. The sequence ny occurs in the data seemingly in contrast with /h/. We
interpret it as point of syllable division /n.y./. It should be noted, however,
that it is possible to interpret Vny as a nasalized vowel plus /y/~a common
sequence in Western Carib languages which accoustically resembles [fi].
6. Finally, = is interpreted as glottal occlusion /'/, and ? as a supraseg
mental morpheme boundary marker, [-].

Phonological Interpretations of Lengerke's Carare and Opone

Lengerke's (1878a and 1878b) data for Carare and Opone are scanty and
poor in quality. Several mistakes in the printing of his Spanish glosses such as
fotuma for totuma (gourd), fortuga for tortuga (turtle), and inca for yuca

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 244 Marshall Durbin and Hay dee Seijas:

(manioc), lead us to suspect that there may be also printing errors in the
transcriptions. For example, we suspect that Opone foto, 'fire' and itana, 'ear'
should probably be poto and ipana, respectively. For Opone we posit a pho
nemic system of /i, e, a, o, u, p, t, k, b, s, c, m, n, r, h, w, y/; / is interpreted as /p/,
/ interpreted as III, and the sequence gua as /wa/. Probably missing are /s/
and hi.
For Carare we derive the same system with the following modifications:
there are no occurrences of /c/ or /w/, and /s/ is interpreted for the sequence
sy in entries such as syaca, /saka/, 'stomach'.

Evidence of Phonological Change

Because Lengerke's data were probably collected in a dialect area differ
ent from that where Pineda Giraldo and Fornaguera gathered theirs, and be
cause there is a time difference of over 60 years between the collecting of the
two sets of data, we offer the following suggestions regarding historical re
constructions:
1. Initial */p/ may have undergone changes in some dialects as evidenced
by the fact that it occurs as III in Opone (Lengerke 1878a) in words such as
/foto/, 'fire'; /faya/, ' kind of birth ' and as /p/ in the Opon-Carare cognates of
these words, /poto-ide/, and /paya-yi/, respectively (Pineda Giraldo and Forna
guera 1958). However, as noted above, printing errors may be present in the
Opone examples.
2. */b/ may have changed to /h/ as seen in Opone /yube/, 'head' and its
equivalent in Opone-Carare /yu-uh-de/; although we find only one example
of this correspondence, the change involved is very common among Southern
Carib languages, but unknown among the northern Carib languages (see
Durbin and Seijas 1972c).
3. */y/ may have changed in the following way:
Carare Opone Opone-Carare English
* /y/> yena yena sena-ifio nose
y:y:s/#?e yeo yeu seu-ye eye
In addition, there is a small number of probable "correspondence sets",
but it is difficult to ascertain whether they reflect historical change, whether
they are due to poor transcription practices, or to printing errors.
It appears that Opone, Carare and Opon-Carare had not diverged very
much from each other since their separation from a common proto-language.
We are inclined to accept Opon-Carare as representing more closely Proto
Opon-Carare than either Opone and Carare.
The greatest distinction that we find among Opone, Carare and Opon
Carare is that the latter presents a possessive suffixing system Aide/ which
has cognates in many Carib languages. Carare and Opone appear to never
carry this suffix which in this respect makes them more similar to some of the
Western Carib languages of the Sierra de Perija. Opon-Carare also shows
closer relationships with the Western Carib languages of the Sierra de Perija
than with other Carib languages to the south of the Opon-Carare area. This
is evidenced by the table that follows in which Opon-Carare is shown to
share with Chaparro of the Sierra de Perija the retention of */p/, wich in
Hianacoto-Umaua of southern Colombia has changed to /b/ and /h/ in initial
and medial position, respectively4).

4) The data presented in the table come from Pineda Giraldo and Fornaguera's (1958) article on
Opon-Carare, the authors' unpublished field data from Chaparro, and Koch-Griinberg's (1908) article on
Hianacoto-Umaua.

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 A note on Opon-Carare

Opon-Carare Chaparro Hianacoto-Umaua English

pana -paanat banaal- ear
-payn -puu' buunu flesh
(thigh)
puda -paagda' buhuu- leg
(foot)
ponu -puun borii- navel

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