Links between language and society among the Murui of north-west Amazonia

Murui, a Witototan language spoken in southern Colombia and northern Peru, has at its disposal a number of linguistic features that mirror the structure of the Murui society, the Murui belief system, the environment the Murui people live in, and their means of subsistence. Demonstrable associations between linguistic and non-linguistic features (the so-called “integration points”) discussed here are: classifiers (and their significance in terms of the Murui beliefs, religion, spirits, and dreams, and the means of subsistence), possessive marking (vs. the relations within the Murui community, social hierarchies, and kinship categorization), spatial adverbs (vs. the means of subsistence and physical environment), and linguistic avoidance terms (vs. the beliefs, religion, spirits, and dreams). As the Murui people are gradually being drawn into the Colombian market economy and relevant cultural practises become obsolete, some correlations described here are more prone to disintegrate than others.