| Cofán -or a'ingae "according to the people", as the speakers of this language call it - is an unclassified language spoken in northeastern Ecuador and in the southern part of the Colombian Amazon. The number of speakers is estimated somewhere between 600 and 800 in Ecuador and approximately between 400 en 600 in Colombia. The majority of them are Cofán-Spanish bilinguals. The growth rate of the population has been reasonably stable over the past decades and in the last ten years it has even increased. Outside Ecuador relatively little is known about this ethnic group. The aim of this project is to gather and analyse linguistic data on Cofán in order to write a grammar of this language. The grammar will consist of a detailed description on all the different aspects of the language system (phonology, morphology, lexicon, semantics, syntax and pragmatics) and of its users (ethnographic information), as well as a small dictionary and a small collection of texts. During the visits to the region there will be close cooperation with the members of this community in order to guarantee a fair exchange of knowledge between the participating parties (researcher and Cofán people) and practical application of the results. The project will result in a PhD-thesis. |
