Maxakalí language


Maxakalí is a Maxakalían language spoken in four villages in Minas Gerais, Brazil, by more than 2,000 people.It is the primary language of the Maxakalí people. There is no known dialectal variation within Maxakalí. The language is characterized by a unique phonology, including vowel lowering and backing, and the absence of fricatives and nasals. Maxakalí typically follows a Subject-Object-Verb word order, and verbs are inflected for mood. The Maxakalí lexicon includes verbal number, noun compounding, and lexical borrowings from Língua Geral varieties and Brazilian Portuguese.

Dialects

No dialectal differences are known. Extinct varieties such as Kapoxó, Kumanaxó, Makuní, Panháme, and the 19th century "Maxakalí", which were sometimes taken to be dialects of Maxakalí, are now generally considered to represent a distinct variety of the Maxakalían family, very close to Ritual Maxakalí. Curt Nimuendaju collected a wordlist of a variety known as Mašakarí/Monačóbm in 1939, which was shown by Araújo to be an early attestion of Maxakalí.
Spoken Maxakalí is different from the variety used in the Maxakalí ritual songs, Ritual Maxakalí, though both are classified as Maxakalían languages.

Geographical distribution

Maxakalí was originally spoken in the Mucuri River, Itanhém River, and Jequitinhonha River areas. Today, Maxakalí is found in four main communities of Minas Gerais, with a total ethnic population of about 2,000:

History

Old Machacari is attested from the 19th century. Reported varieties include Monoxó, Makoni, Kapoxó, Kumanaxó, and Panhame. After the dispersion of its speakers in the 1750s, they lived between the upper Mucuri River and São Mateus River, possibly up to Jequitinhonha in the north to the Suaçuí Grande River, a tributary of the Doce River, in the south. After 1750, the southward migration of the Botocudos forced the Machacari to seek refuge in Portuguese settlements on the Atlantic coast, in Alto dos Bois, and in Peçanha. According to Saint-Hilaire, the Monoxó lived in Cuyaté probably around 1800, before seeking refuge in Peçanha. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Panhame and other Maxakali groups allied with the Portuguese to fight the Botocudos.
Modern Maxakali is distinct from Old Machacari. It was historically spoken from the Mucuri River valley up to the headwaters of the Itanhaém River in Minas Gerais.

Phonology

Maxakalí has ten vowels, including five oral vowels and their nasal counterparts. In the table below, their orthographic representation is given in angle brackets.

Vowels

Silva describes two nasal spread processes which affect vowels.

Vowel lowering

According to Silva, all vowels except /a ã/ have lowered allophones.
The vowels /ɛ ɛ̃ i ĩ ɨ ɨ̃ u ũ/ are lowered to, respectively, preceding a palatal coda. Examples include tex ~ tehex ‘rain’, yẽy ‘to shut up, to be silent’, pix ‘wash ’, mĩy ‘make ’, kux ‘to end; forehead’, mũy ‘to hold, to grab ’, tox ‘long’, nõy ‘other; same-sex sibling’.
The vowels /ɨ ɨ̃ u ũ/ are further lowered to, respectively, preceding a velar coda, as in tuk ‘to grow up’, yũmũg ‘to know, to understand, to learn’, ponok ‘white’, mõg ‘to go ’. The front vowels /ɛ ɛ̃ i ĩ/ are never followed by a surface velar coda, because underlying velar codas are palatalized to palatal codas in this environment.
In addition, /ɨ̃/ surfaces as word-finally, as in yõgnũ ‘it is mine’, xõnnũ ‘son! ’, nũ ‘this; to come.

Backing of /a ã/

The vowels /a ã/ are backed to preceding a coronal coda. Examples include putat ‘road’, nãn ‘achiote’, hax ‘smell, to smell’, gãx ‘angry’.
The vowels /a ã/ are backed and rounded in open syllables following a labial onset, as in kopa ‘inside’, hõmã ‘long ago’.

Consonants

The nasals have been analyzed as allophones of /b d̪ dʑ/ preceding nasal nuclei, but the contrast between /m n̪ ɲ/ and /b d̪ dʑ/ is emerging in Portuguese borrowings and in diminutives.
In the coda position, only the place of articulation is contrastive, the possibilities being labial, dental, palatal, and velar. The typical realization of the codas involves prevocalization, the consonantal element itself being optional.

Absence of fricatives and nasals

Maxakalí has been analyzed as having no contrastive fricative or nasal consonants, with the exception of the glottal continuant /h/. The phonological status of the nasal consonants is ambiguous; Silva argues that in modern Maxakalí they are becoming contrastive through phonologization, even though until recently nasal consonants occurred only as allophones of voiced obstruents.

Syntax

Word order

The most common word order in Maxakalí is SOV.

Pronominal forms and morphosyntactic alignment

Most clause types in Maxakalí are characterized by the ergative–absolutive morphosyntactic alignment. The agents of transitive verbs are marked by the ergative postposition te, whereas the patients of transitive verbs and the intransitive subjects are unmarked. Absolutive pronominal participants are expressed by person prefixes; ergative pronominal participants take special forms upon receiving the ergative postposition te. The same forms are found with other postpositions; furthermore, ã and xa occur as the irregular inflected forms of the dative postposition pu in the first person singular and in the second person, respectively.
PersonPostpositionalDativeErgativeAbsolutive
1SGããã teũg
2xaxaxa teã
3tututu teũ
1INCLyũmũ’ãyũmũ’ãyũmũ’ã teyũmũg
1EXCLũgmũ’ãũgmũ’ãũgmũ’ã teũgmũg

Morphology

Mood inflection

Maxakalí verbs inflect for mood. The realis mood is the most common one, whereas the irrealis mood is used in imperative and purpose clauses. The morphological exponence of the mood inflection follows one of at least 7 patterns.

Lexicon

[Verbal number]

Some verbs form number pairs, whereby the choice of the verb depends on the number of the absolutive participant. The noun phrase which encodes the participant does not receive any overt marking.
Subject number
'''Patient number'''

Noun compounding

Maxakalí nouns readily form compounds, here are some examples:

Vocabulary

Maxakalí has a number of lexical loans from one of the Língua Geral varieties, such as ãmãnex ‘priest’, tãyũmak ‘money’, kãmãnok ‘horse’, tapayõg ‘Black man’.
Loanwords from Brazilian Portuguese are extremely numerous. Examples include kapex ‘coffee’, komenok ‘blanket’, kapitõg ‘captain’, pẽyõg ‘beans’, mug ‘bank’, tenemiyam ‘TV’.