Pidjanan languages
The Pidjanan languages are a subgroup of Arawakan languages of northern South America.
Names
The term Pidjanan was coined by Sérgio Meira from Wapishana pidan ‘people’, as can be seen in the ethnonyms Wa-pishana and Mao-pidian.They are referred to as Mapidianic in Glottolog 4.3, and as Rio Branco by Nikulin & Carvalho.
Languages
According to Meira, the Pidjanan languages are:- Pidjanan
- *Mawayana, spoken by a dozen elderly people living in ethnic Waiwai and Tiriyó villages in Brazil and Suriname
- *Wapishana, spoken by over 6,000 people on both sides of the Guyana-Brazil border
- *? Atorad
Ramirez's classification is:
Parawana and Aroaqui are closely related, and may be the same language.
Proto-language
Proto-Pidjanan has been reconstructed by Meira.Phonology
Proto-Pidjanan consonant phonemes:Proto-Pidjanan vowel phonemes:
Morphology
Proto-Pidjanan person-marking prefixes:Proto-Pidjanan person-marking suffixes:
The functions of person markers.
Nominal possession possessed and non-possessed forms.
Lexicon
Unless indicated otherwise, the Mawayana and Wapishana data below is from Sérgio Meira's field notes, as cited in Meira.Meira's Mawayana data is from Marurunau, Guyana, and his Wapishana data is from Mapuera, Nhamundá-Mapuera Indigenous Area, Pará State, Brazil. The other sources are:
- Howard
- Carlin
- Carlin
- WLP
- Silva, Silva & Oliveira
- WLP
Vocabulary