WORDS FOR 'SNOW' AND 'ICE' IN THE ARHUACAN LANGUAGES.

This article focuses on words for 'snow' and 'ice' in the Arhuacan languages of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (Colombia). Specifically, Kogi /nab'gala/ and Damana /d...m...ng...na/ (both 'ice'), as well as probably Kankuí damöngána 'snow', seem to be suffixed forms of a proto-word for 'snow' that itself survives directly in Damana /dəm/ and Ika /dƷəN/. Moreover, Ika /dƷwábu/ 'ice' is cognate with Kogi /nu'abi/ 'snow', suggesting that this latter form was not borrowed from Spanish nieve, as has been suggested; instead both these words may be suffixed forms of a proto-word for 'ice'. There are close relationships among these terms within Arhuacan, but they seem largely unrelated to synonymous terms in other Colombian Chibchan languages, which suggests that words for these concepts may have been created or borrowed when Chibchan speakers first arrived in the region of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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