Maxakalí language

Maxakalí (Yĩy'ax 'language', Tikmũ'ũn Yĩy'ax 'Maxakalí language') is a Maxakalían language spoken in fourteen villages in Minas Gerais, Brazil, by fewer than a thousand people.

Dialects

Mason identifies six varieties of Maxakali. All but Maxakalí proper are extinct:

• Maxakalí
• Caposhó (Kapoxo) (†)
• Cumanashó (Kumanaxo) (†)
• Maconí (Makuni) (†)
• Monoshó (Monaxo, Monocho) (†)
• Panyame (†)

Phonology

Maxakalí has five vowels, occurring in both oral and nasal form.

Vowels

Consonants

Syntax

Word order

The most common word order in Maxakalí is SOV.

"The child drinks milk"

Morphosyntactic alignment

Maxakalí is an ergative language. The ergative case covers transitive subjects as well as indirect objects. The absolutive case covers intransitive subjects and transitive objects.

"We (excluding you) are going to the market to buy you (indirect object) some food."

Morphology

Suppletive verb number

For some verbs, number is shown not by conjugation, but by suppletive verb stems. These verb stems can show number differences either for the subject or for the object.

Subject number

"The man sits/sat."

"The men sit/sat."

Object number

"The man killed a monkey."

"The man killed the monkeys."

Noun compounding

Maxakalí nouns readily form compounds, here are some examples:

"lips"

"salt"

"finger"

References

External links

• Proel: Lengua Mashakalí
• Maxakalí-English grammar and dictionary
• Information on Maxakalí at Etnolinguistica.Org's Catalogue of South American Languages