Suyá language
Kĩsêdjê is a Jê languages|Northern Jê] language spoken in Mato Grosso, Brazil. It is closely related to Tapayúna; together, they form the Tapajós branch of Northern Jê.
Kĩsêdjê is closely related to Tapayúna; the common past on the Tapajós River, shared by the Kĩsêdjê and the Tapayúna, is still part of their oral history. Phonological differences between the languages include the reflexes of Proto-Northern Jê *m/*mb, *mr/*mbr, *c, *ñ, and *b. In Kĩsêdjê, these consonants are reflected as m/mb, mr/mbr, s, n, and p, respectively, whereas Tapayúna has w, nr, t, j, and w in the same words.
Phonology
Consonants
Kĩsêdjê preserved the consonants of Proto-Tapajós almost intact, with the exception of the sound change *t̪ʰ > s.Onsets
The following table lists some of the possible onsets of Kĩsêdjê; in addition, most of these can further combine with /w/ or /ɲ/. Underlying nasals acquire an oral phase preceding an oral nucleus.Vowels
The vowel inventory of Kĩsêdjê is shown below. Nonato reports that there is no allophonic variation. By convention, the tilde, which is part of the graphemes that denote nasal vowels, is left out in the orthography followingEcho vowels
Kĩsêdjê has a phenomenon whereby an echo vowel is obligatorily inserted in utterance-final words whose underlying form ends in a consonant; that way, all utterances end in vowels on surface in Kĩsêdjê. Vowel epenthesis often causes the underlying coda to lenite. The resulting alternations are represented orthographically, as in thep / thewe ‘fish’, wit / wiri ‘only’, ngrôt / ngrôrô ‘the Pleiades’, khẽn / khẽne ‘stone’, hwysysôm / hwysysômy ‘mosquito’. In words that end in an underlying rhotic coda, echo vowels are inserted regardless of whether the word is in the utterance-final position, as in ngõrõ ‘to sleep’.Morphology
Finiteness
As in all other Northern Jê languages, verbs inflect for finiteness and thus have a basic opposition between a finite form and a nonfinite form. Finite forms are used in matrix clauses only, whereas nonfinite forms are used in all types of subordinate clauses as well as in some matrix clauses. Nonfinite forms are most often formed via suffixation and/or prefix substitution. Some verbs lack an overt finiteness distinction.The available nonfinite suffixes are /-ɽ/, /-n/, as well as /-k/, /-m/, and /-t/, as shown in the table below.
In Proto-Northern Jê, several verbs derived their finite forms by means of leniting the stem-final consonant. In Kĩsêdjê, at least three verbs retain this pattern, though the relation between the finite and nonfinite forms has been obfuscated by a series of regular sound changes, including *-ôj > -wâj, *-c > -t.
| finite | nonfinite | gloss | Proto-Northern Jê finite | Proto-Northern Jê nonfinite |
| ngõrõ | nhon | to sleep | *ŋõr | *ñõt |
| pâj / pâji | pôt | to arrive | *bôj | *bôc |
| ro hwâj / ro hwâji | ro hôt | to extract | *pôj | *pôc |
The erstwhile palatalizing prefix
In Proto-Northern Jê, a small set of verbs formed their nonfinite forms by employing one of the aforementioned processes and a morphophonological process whereby the onset of the stressed syllable became palatal, and the nucleus of the stressed syllable was raised ; this has been attributed to the influence of an underlying palatalizing nonfinite prefix. In Kĩsêdjê, some of these verbs still follow the archaic pattern, though the relation between the finite and nonfinite forms has been obfuscated by a series of regular sound changes.| finite | nonfinite | gloss |
| kutho | kusôn | to ignite |
| kujathe | kujasêk | to push |
| ngõrõ | nhon | to sleep |
| ngõ | nhorõ | to give |
| tha | syry | to cut off ' |
| ne | nhy'rỹ'' | to do so, to say so |
Prefix substitution or loss
In addition to the aforementioned processes, the finiteness inflection may involve prefix substitution or loss. For example, the valency-reducing prefixes are a- and a- in finite verb forms, but wi- and tá-/tu-, respectively, in the nonfinite forms. In addition, some verbs which denote physiological activities or movement have a prefix in their finite forms but not in the nonfinite form. Some examples are given below.Nominative–absolutive clauses
Future, progressive, continuous, completive, and negated clauses in Kĩsêdjê show a cross-linguistically rare morphosyntactic alignment pattern, known as the nominative–absolutive alignment.Kĩsêdjê has also been considered unusual in the literature because of its unexpected distribution of ergative and nominative marking of transitive agents in certain types of clauses, such as future and negative clauses. More specifically, transitive agents expressed by a full noun phrase are nominative, whereas pronominal transitive agents are ergative, as in the following examples:
Such split has been previously considered to be impossible by R. M. W. Dixon:
Cross-referencing systems are thus basically pronominal. We would expect them to be on a nominative-accusative pattern, since this characterizes pronouns at the extreme left of the hierarchy … What we can predict is that, if there is a ‘split’ of this kind, then bound prefixes will be accusative and case-marking on free forms will be ergative. This is exactly what is found.