Hixkaryana is one of the
Cariban languages
The Cariban languages are a family of languages indigenous to northeastern South America. They are widespread across northernmost South America, from the mouth of the Amazon River to the Colombian Andes, and they are also spoken in small pocket ...
, spoken by just over 500 people on the
Nhamundá River, a tributary of the
Amazon River
The Amazon River (, ; es, Río Amazonas, pt, Rio Amazonas) in South America is the largest river by discharge volume of water in the world, and the disputed longest river system in the world in comparison to the Nile.
The headwaters of t ...
in
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
. It is one of around a dozen languages that are described as having
object–verb–subject word order (initially by linguist
Desmond C. Derbyshire).
Phonology
Hixkaryana has the following consonant
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
s:
* is a
retroflex tap with a
lateral
Lateral is a geometric term of location which may refer to:
Healthcare
*Lateral (anatomy), an anatomical direction
* Lateral cricoarytenoid muscle
* Lateral release (surgery), a surgical procedure on the side of a kneecap
Phonetics
*Lateral co ...
release.
Hixkaryana has the following vowel phonemes:
Grammar
In Hixkaryana, arguments are indexed on the verb by means of person prefixes. These prefixes form an inverse-like pattern in which the argument highest in the hierarchy 2nd > 1st > 3rd is indexed on the verb. If the object of a transitive verb outranks the subject according to this hierarchy, the appropriate O-prefix is used; otherwise, an A-prefix is used.
Intransitive verbs take prefixes mostly similar to the transitive prefixes given above, with an
active–stative. The arguments' grammatical number is indexed on the verb by means of portmanteau suffixes that combine tense, aspect, mood, and number.
In most cases, the person prefixes unambiguously determine which of the arguments is the subject and which is the object. When both the subject and the object are third person, however, the person prefix is inadequate to fully determine the identity of the arguments. In these situations, therefore, word order is crucial in determining their identity. Hixkaryana may have an
object–verb–subject word order. The example below, "toto yonoye kamara", cannot be given the AVO reading "the man ate the jaguar"; the OVA reading – "the jaguar ate the man" – is the only possible one.
Indirect objects, however, follow the subject:
Moreover, word order in non-finite
embedded clause
A subordinate clause, dependent clause, subclause, or embedded clause is a clause that is embedded within a complex sentence. For instance, in the English sentence "I know that Bette is a dolphin", the clause "that Bette is a dolphin" occurs as th ...
s is SOV
Like most other languages with objects preceding the verb, it is
postposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
al.
References
*
*
*
External links
Metathesis in HixkaryanaHixkaryana in SAILS database on South American languages
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hixkaryana Language
Languages of Brazil
Object–verb–subject languages
Cariban languages