Northern Emberá
Cholo
Native to	Colombia,Panama
Native speakers	(72,000 cited 2001–2012)[1]
Language family	Chocoan Emberá Northern Northern Emberá
Language codes
ISO 639-3	emp
Glottolog	nort2972
ELP	Northern Emberá

Northern Emberá, also known asWest Emberá andCholo, is the largestEmberá language. It is spoken largely inColombia, but is also the principal language of theDarién Gap inPanama.

Northern Emberá is a language that comes from Emberá which is part of the Chocoan family. The Chocoan family includes two principal groups, Waunana and the group of the Emberá languages. The Emberá languages form a language continuum with two geographically defined subgroups: the Northern branch contains Northern Emberá proper (referred to as just 'Northern Emberá' in Mortensen 1999)^[2] and the Catío language.

The Waunanas and Emberás are the last remnants of a larger group of Pre-Columbian ethnic groups, such as the Orominas, the Chancos, the Guarras, the Burrumías, that were diminished during the Colonial period. Genetic findings show that the speakers of Chocó languages are genetically differentiated from the Chibcha speaking tribes of Northern Colombia and cluster with the Orinoquian and Amazonian indigenous populations. Waunana and Emberá share a large number of cognates (estimated to 50% by Loewen 1960: 12), which provide evidence for their common origin. However, there is no clear evidence in terms of a sufficient number of cognates for a common origin of Chocó with other South or Central American families.

The majority of the Catío language are found along the Upper Sinu, San Jorge, San Pedro and Murri Rivers of northwestern Colombia with a few living in Panama. The majority of Darien Emberá speakers live in Panama with approximately 2,000 living in northwestern Colombia on the Atrato River.

^[3]

Catío's phoneme inventory contains 16 consonants (p, t, dɮ, t͡ʃʼ, k, b, d, g, s, h, m, n, r, u) and 6 vowels, both oral and nasal (a, e, i, o, u, ɨ). Darien Embera's phoneme inventory contains 17 consonants (p, t, k, b, d, dɮ, t͡ʃʼ, g, s, h, z, r, t, w, j) and 6 vowels, oral and nasal (a, e, i, o, u, ɨ).

The Chocó languages show the properties of head-final languages: OV order, postpositions, embedded verbs preceding matrix verbs. At the clausal level, the basic order is SOV with some flexibility used for discourse purposes.

The neutral order in the noun phrase is: [DP D [QP [AP [NP N] A ] Q ]. Determiners (D) precede the noun (N), while adjectives (A) and quantifiers (Q) are postnominal in the neutral configuration. Determiners include demonstratives, some indexical elements, as well as the definite determiner. The definite article is also used for the nominalization of non-nominal constituents.

Verb clusters are linearized in a head-final pattern. The auxiliary follows the lexical verb, and the matrix verb follows the embedded verb. With non-verbal predicates, the auxiliary follows the predicative element. For example:

Reduplication is very productive and may be total, or partial. It is frequently used for the derivation of adjectives, and verbs. Verbs formed through reduplication have an iterative or durative interpretation. Reduplication is used to lessen the intensity of both verbs and adjectives.

In Chocó languages, the nasal feature spreads throughout a nasal morpheme, affecting vowels, sonorants and voiced obstruents. In Northern Emberá, regressive nasalization is reported to appear only with some speakers. The domain of nasalization is blocked by voiceless obstruents as well as by the multiple vibrant /r/.

Number is marked on nouns and verbs. The singular is generally unmarked, while the plural is overtly marked. Within the noun phrase, plural is marked on the head, which is either a noun or a pronoun. Nominal plural is encoded by the morpheme -rã in Emberá. The plural suffix is highly integrated to the verbal inflection such that its form depends on tense; Northern Emberá -ta ‘PL’ in present/habitual and -da ‘PL’ in the past tense.

Northern Emberá and Catío make a clear distinction (immediate vs. unspecified temporal distance) in those tenses in which the event time point does not coincide with the speech time point (past and future) For example:

Northern Emberá is written in two similar orthographies: one is used in Panama, and the other is used in Colombia.^[4]

Vocabulary of Darién Emberá, a Northern Emberá variety, with their English and Catío equivalents.

• Aguirre Licht, Daniel 2009. ‘Choco languages’, in Brown, Keith and Sarah Ogilvie (eds.). Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Amsterdam: Elsevier,
• Binder, Ronald E. 1977. ‘Thematic linkage in Waunana discourse’. In Robert E. Longacre and Frances Woods (eds.), Discourse grammar: Studies in indigenous languages of Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador, part 2. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington,
• Hajek, John 2013. ‘Vowel nasalization’, in Dryer, Matthew S. and Martin Haspelmath (eds.). The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available online at:http://wals.info/chapter/10
• Reich, David, Nick Patterson, Desmond Campbell, Arti Tandon, Stéphane Mazieres, Nicolas Ray, Maria V. Parra, Winston Rojas, Constanza Duque, Natalia Mesa, et al. 2012 ‘Reconstructing Native American population history’,Nature

• Choco languages
• Languages of Colombia
• Languages of Panama

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