Ciguayo language

Ciguayo (Siwayo) was the language of the Samaná Peninsula of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic) at the time of the Spanish Conquest. The Ciguayos appear to have predated the agricultural Taíno who inhabited much of the island. The language appears to have been moribund at the time of Spanish contact, and within a century it was extinct.^[1][2]

Ciguayo
Siwayo
Native to	Dominican Republic
Region	Samaná Peninsula
Ethnicity	Ciguayos
Extinct	16th century
Language family	unclassified; Tolan ? (one of the pre-Arawakan languages of the Greater Antilles)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Linguist List	0yv
Glottolog	None
Precolombian languages of the Antilles.   Ciguayo Ciboney Taíno, Classic Taíno, Iñeri, and Shebaya were Arawakan, Karina and Yao were Cariban. Guanahatabey, Macorix, and Ciguayo are unclassified.

Ciguayo was spoken on the northeastern coast of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Magua from Nagua southward to at least the Yuna River, and throughout the Samana Peninsula.^[3]

Lexicon

Little is known of Ciguayo apart from it being a distinct language from Taino and neighboring Macorix. The only attested words are "gold", tuob (presumably [tuˈob] or [ˈtwob]) and a few place names such as Quizquella (presumably [kisˈkeja]), meaning "very mountainous." This makes it unlikely that the language is Arawakan or Cariban,^{[or Warao?]} as languages of those families have simple V and CV syllable structures even in loanwords that were originally CCV or CVC. Granberry & Vescelius (2004) speculate that the closest parallels might be in the Tolan languages of Honduras.^[3]

Granberry & Vescelius (2004) analyze the morphemes of tuob 'gold' and Quizquella 'very mountainous' as:

to-w-b(e) 'gold'

• to- (cf. Eastern Tol t 'heavy(ness)')
• -w- (cf. Eastern Tol -w- 'its')
• -b(e) (cf. Eastern Tol -pe 'stone')

kʰis-kʰe-ya 'very mountainous'

• kʰis- (cf. Eastern Tol kʰis 'hard rock')
• -kʰe- (cf. reduplication in Eastern Tol)
• -ya (cf. Eastern Tol yo 'tree')

See also

• Pre-Arawakan languages of the Greater Antilles

References

1. Granberry, Julian (2012). "Lenguas indígenas del caribe" (PDF). Cuba Arqueológica. 5 (1): 5–11.
2. Guitar, Lynne (2005). "Following Linguistic Trails across Half a Millennium Provides New Answers to Old Questions". H-LatAm (H-Net).
3. Granberry, Julian, & Gary Vescelius (2004). Languages of the Pre-Columbian Antilles. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0-8173-5123-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)