Documentation of the Mayoruna languages of western Amazonia: a compilation of recordings of oral history narratives and other speech genres

The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides grants worldwide to for the linguistic documentation of endangered language and knowledge. Grantees create multimedia collection of endangered languages. These collections are preserved and made freely available through the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) housed at the library of SOAS University of London.

Of the five extant languages in the Mayoruna branch of the Panoan family, only Matses andMatis have been described, but even for these no archived recordings or text databases areavailable. Kulina, Demushbo and Chankueshbo are spoken by people who the Matsescaptured 45-70 years ago. I propose to record, transcribe, and translate a total of 165 hours ofMatses, Kulina, Chankueshbo and Demushbo speech (2500, 30, 2 and 1 speakers,respectively; Amazonian Peru and Brazil, 73°9'W, 5°17'S), of which 30% will be parsed andannotated, to be archived and to produce a book and dictionary for the Matses. Primary investigator: David Fleck

Project Details


Location: Peru, South America, Peru, Peru, Americas, United States of America Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): University of Oregon Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £103,068.00 Commencement Date: 01/2006
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