Etnografía y lengua Bari: visión preliminar

Abstract

This paper offers a succinct description of the main structural features of Barí, a Chibchan language of Venezuela, preceded by a likewise succint ethnography. The ethnographic part deals with three main issues of the Barí culture, social structure, way of life, and world view. The linguistic description provides a quick view of the phonology followed by a more detailed morphosyntactic account of the Barí grammatical structure. In the wider context of Chibchan comparative linguistics. a new member of the family is described, with the particularity that it is the easternmost language, and one hitherto practically ignored in Chibchan linguistics.