Guató is a
language isolate
A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi ...
spoken by 4 of the
Guató people of Brazil. It has variously been claimed to be of
Macro-Jê or isolate affiliation.
Classification
Kaufman (1990) provisionally classified Guató as a branch of the
Macro-Jê languages, but no evidence for this was found by Eduardo Ribeiro. Martins (2011) also suggests a relationship with
Macro-Jê. Nikulin (2020) excludes this possibility.
Language contact
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the
Bororo
The Bororo are indigenous people of Brazil, living in the state of Mato Grosso. They also extended into Bolivia and the Brazilian state of Goiás. The Western Bororo live around the Jauru and Cabaçal rivers. The Eastern Bororo (Orarimogodoge) l ...
,
Tupi, and
Karib language families due to contact.
An automated computational analysis (
ASJP
The Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) is a collaborative project applying computational approaches to comparative linguistics using a database of word lists. The database is open access and consists of 40-item basic-vocabulary lists f ...
4) by Müller et al. (2013)
[Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013. ]
ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013)
'. found lexical similarities between Guató and the
Zamucoan languages
Zamucoan (also Samúkoan) is a small language family of Paraguay (northeast Chaco) and Bolivia
Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse g ...
. However, since the analysis was automatically generated, the grouping could be either due to mutual lexical borrowing, genetic inheritance, or chance resemblances.
Distribution
Today, Guató is spoken in Guató Indigenous Territory and BaÃa dos Guató Indigenous Territory.
Loukotka (1968) reported that in
Mato Grosso do Sul
Mato Grosso do Sul ( ) is one of Federative units of Brazil, Brazil's 27 federal units, located in the southern part of the Central-West Region, Brazil, Central-West Region, bordering five Brazilian states: Mato Grosso (to the north), Goiás and ...
, Brazil, Guató is spoken on the banks of the
Paraguay River
The Paraguay River (''Ysyry Paraguái'' in Guarani language, Guarani, ''Rio Paraguai'' in Portuguese language, Portuguese, ''RÃo Paraguay'' in Spanish language, Spanish) is a major river in south-central South America, running through Brazil, Bol ...
and up the
São Lourenço River, along the Bolivian border.
[ It is also spoken at Uberaba Lake]Santa Cruz Department (Bolivia)
Santa Cruz () is the largest of the Departments of Bolivia, nine constituent departments of Bolivia, occupying about one-third (33.74%) of the country's territory. With an area of , it is slightly smaller than Japan or the United States, US st ...
.
Phonology
The Guató vowel system, like that of Macro-Jê languages, collapses a three-way distinction of height in oral vowels to two in nasal vowels.
Vocabulary
Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Guató.
References
Further reading
*
External links
Portal Japiim
(online dictionary)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Guato language
Macro-Jê languages
Languages of Brazil
Indigenous languages of South America (Central)
Endangered Indigenous languages of the Americas
Language isolates of South America