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Betoi-Jirara, Sáliban, and Hod
i: Relationships among Three Linguistic Lineages of the Mid-Orinoco Region - Anthropological Linguistics
- University of Nebraska Press
- Volume 59, Number 3, Fall 2017
- pp. 263-321
- 10.1353/anl.2017.0010
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
A significant number of lexical and grammatical similarities exist among three linguistic lineages of the mid-Orinoco region in Venezuela usually regarded as independent: Betoi-Jirara, an extinct isolate, the small Sáliban family, and Hod i, an isolate still actively spoken. While a genealogical connection of Sáliban and Hod i appears unfounded—the similarities here gathered are better attributed to contact than to genetic inheritance—a distant genealogical relationship between Betoi-Jirara and the Sáliban languages seems plausible, although the evidence is not conclusive. Perhaps due to the meagerness of the Betoi-Jirara corpus, the Betoi-Sáliban lexical resemblances are not particularly numerous, while several of their structural similarities seem to be mid-Orinoco regional traits or the result of contact.