LWM 179: Toba

Toba

Harriet E. Manelis Klein
State University of New York at Stony Brook

Toba, or Namqom, is a Guaykuruan language spoken by the Toba Indians in Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay. The majority of these speakers (30,000) are found in the northeastern Argentine provinces of Chaco and Formosa. Immigration in the last half of the 20th century has also led to the settlement of speakers in urban centers of the provinces of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe. The Toba are the largest and most widely known indigenous group in the northeastern region of Argentina. The Toba language is closely related to four other languages of the Guaykuruan family: Mocoví, Pilagá, Kadiwéu (Mbaya), and Abipon (extinct).

This work provides a linguistic overview of the fundamental features of the Toba language. The preferred word order for Toba is SVO, but other patterns of word order are possible. A discussion of important syntactic and semantic properties of the language is included, as is a detailed description of the phonology and morphology. Two texts, with interlinear translations, reiterate and further illuminate the grammatical information. Harriet E. Manelis Klein is a Professor Emerita at Montclair State University. She is presently a Visiting Scholar in Linguistics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She has been working in the area of Amerindian languages for the past thirty years.

ISBN 9783895862380. Languages of the World/Materials 179. 60pp. 2001.