[2] This region is populated by a number of other ethnic communities, most notably the Hup people, with whom they share several linguistic and cultural characteristics.

[3] According to Wilson de Lima Silva,[3] within this time frame, about 20,000 indigenous people were displaced from their homes and sold as slaves.

From this time until 1920 is when the arrival of missionaries was encouraged by a program run by the government called ‘civilização e catequese’ (civilization and conversion).

Kaye has also outlined certain phonological features in Desano, namely nasal assimilation, vowel coalescence, and epenthesis.

[4] Years later, Chacon (2007) carried out a phonological-comparison project focusing on Tukano and Desano, which are sister languages within the same family.

[3] Silva has also included certain notable phonological features of Desano, namely nasal-harmony, rarely found in other languages and previously studied by Kaye.

[4][6] Similar in nature, but perhaps slightly different from a language-documentation project, Miller (1999) has conducted in-depth primary experience-based research into Desano by living with the people in Colombia.

Her publication focuses mainly on syntactic features of Desano, including but not limited to the issue of verb-compounding, as well as various phonological observations.

[7] Thorough documentation of Desano morphology is available from various scholars, mainly contributed by Reichel-Dolmatoff (in Portuguese), and Silva (in English).

In which, Silva (2012) has offered a detailed account that covers the nominal and the verbal aspects of Desano morphology.

[3] In general, Desano words follow a CVCV structure in terms of consonants and vowels,[3] which is similar to that of Japanese.

/abe/ ‘sun, moon’ Desano people would not consider this object to be feminine or masculine, therefore it is unmarked for gender.

Overall, Desano tense works closely with its unique mood system, which also embeds emotion into the written form of the grammar itself.

There are 2 types of irrealis statements:[3] Markers of oriented modality:[3] PROX:proximal GEN:general tense CONTR:contrary