Transcription, parsing, and comparative analysis of tone in Iquito [iqu] texts from circa 1960 and 2002-2018

FAIN: FN-285905-22

Christine M. Beier
University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA 94704-5940)

Research and writing of a book presenting a comparative analysis of grammatical descriptions of Iquito, an endangered Zaparoan language of the northern Peruvian Amazonia.

This project advances the documentation and description of Iquito (ISO 639-3: iqu), a critically endangered Zaparoan language of northern Peruvian Amazonia, with a focus on its complex tonal system. Core activities are transcription, parsing, and analysis of texts from circa 1960; re-parsing of re-analyzed texts from 2002-2018; and comparative analysis of these texts to inform ongoing grammatical description of Iquito. Because Iquito's tonal system includes both boundary Hs and HLL melodies that surface in multiple domains and across word boundaries, text-based analysis of connected speech is an indispensable tool for discovery. Thorough documentation of Iquito's tonal system will inform the typology of tone in Amazonia, and contribute to cross-linguistic typology and theories of grammatical tone. New textual data will also speak to other typologically unusual phenomena found in Iquito, including discontinuous constituency and the expression of reality status through word order.