El pueblo barí en busca de su autogestión lingüística

Abstract

It has not been an easy task for Venezuelan linguists to take up an intensive research of the Bari language, the only one belonging to the Chibchan family in this country. Our professionals are somewhat more accustomed to Arawak, Carib and other families of the Amazonian Area. Moreover, Bari has a well gained reputation of being a rather complex linguistic system, especially on account of its tonal character and other suprasegmental peculiarities. But we must add to this panorama the attitude of Bari society itself, whose members desire to participate collectively in linguistic research having professional linguists as collaborators. This article shows how our anthropolinguistic team has been facing this challenge for a number of years.