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Tariana, an Arawak language from Brazil, has nominal markers which convey temporal and aspectual information about the noun phrase. Besides nominal future, there is a distinction between completed and non-completed nominal pasts. The completed nominal past has three meanings – decessive ('late, gone'), temporal ('former'), and commiserative or deprecatory ('poor thing'). The latter is only applicable to humans and higher animates. The non-completed nominal past has a further semantic component of relevance of the state or property for the present time. The usage of the markers is governed by the principle of communicative necessity – in contrast to clausal, or propositional, tense-cum-evidentiality markers which are always obligatory. Having special means for expressing tense, aspect and relevance within a noun phrase – distinct from tense and aspect categories with clausal scope – constitutes a typologically rare feature of the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tariana is an endangered language spoken by about 100 people in a remote area of northwest Amazonia, Brazil. The language is spoken in a fascinating area where one can only marry someone who speaks a different language and who belongs to a different ethnic group. Tariana is being rapidly displaced by an unrelated language, Tucano. The article focuses on the drastic changes which have occurred among the Tariana over the past decade. At present, Tariana speaking communities as such no longer exist. The linguistic exogamy is occasionally violated. Language remains the badge of identity, but for most people only in theory. The puristic language attitudes have relented. Occasional code-switching with Tucano and Portuguese (the national language) is no longer considered a mark of incompetence. Many Tariana lament that their language is being lost, and are relying on the school to "learn it back", and the language is no longer spoken in the families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tariana is an endangered language spoken by about one hundred people in a remote area of northwest Amazonia, Brazil. The language is spoken in a fascinating area where one can only marry someone who speaks a different language and who belongs lo a different ethnic group. Tariana is being rapidly displaced by an unrelated language, Tucano. Plans lo implement leaching Tariana in the secondary school in Iauarete, a local mission center, started to take shape in 1999, several years after the author began her fieldwork on this language. In June 2000, a workshop on Tariana literacy was held, with over three hundred participants, having different levels of competence. The paper describes the ups and downs of the workshop, the ways in which pedagogical materials were worked out, and what problems the organizers had lo confront. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study that examined code-mixing and code-switching of Tariana dialects spoken in the multilingual area of the Vaupés basin in Northwest Amazonia, Brazil. Overview of the Vaupés area; Discussion on the principles of choosing a language; Analysis on the use of different languages in varied circumstances such as code-switching and code-mixing.