Macro-Arawakan is a proposed

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ...

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

and the

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

centered on the

Arawakan languages Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient Indigenous peoples in South America. Branc ...

. Sometimes, the proposal is called Arawakan, and the central family is called ''Maipurean''.

Proposals

Kaufman (1990) includes the following: **

Arawakan Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient Indigenous peoples in South America. Branch ...

(Maipurean) ** Arawan ** Guajiboan **

Candoshi Candoshi-Shapra (also known as Candoshi, Candoxi, Kandoshi, Kandozi-Chapra, and Murato) is an indigenous American language isolate, spoken by several thousand people in western South America along the Chapuli, Huitoyacu, Pastaza, and Morona rive ...

Payne (1991) and Derbyshire (1992) have: **

(Maipurean) ** Arawan ** Guajiboan ** Puquina ** Harakmbet Jolkesky (2016) argues for the following: **

(Maipurean) **

** Puquina ** Munichi According to Jolkesky (op. cit., 611-616), the proto-Macro-Arawakan language would have been spoken in the Middle

Ucayali River The Ucayali River (, ) is the main headstream of the Amazon River. It rises about north of Lake Titicaca, in the Arequipa region of Peru and becomes the Amazon at the confluence of the Marañón river, Marañón close to Nauta city. The city of ...

Basin during the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE, and its speakers would have produced Tutishcainyo pottery in the region. Martins (2005: 342–370) groups the

and

Nadahup languages The Nadahup languages, also known as Makú (Macú) or ''Vaupés–Japurá'', form a small language family in Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela. The name ''Maku people (disambiguation), Makú'' is pejorative, being derived from an Arawakan language ...

together as part of a proposed Makúan-Arawakan (Nadahup-Arawakan) family, but this proposal has been rejected by Aikhenvald (2006: 237). Carvalho (2021) notes that the Arawakan and Arawan families have had significant long-term mutual interaction, but does not consider the two language families to be related. According to Carvalho (2021), the Juruá- Purus linguistic corridor had facilitated the migration of Arawakan speakers to the southern fringes of the Amazon basin.

Pronouns

Pronominal system of the Macro-Arawakan languages: :

Lexicon

Several words in the basic lexicon of the Macro-Arawakan languages were pointed out as possible cognates:Jolkesky, Marcelo. (2016). Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas. Brasilia: UnB. PhD Dissertation. :

References

Bibliography

* Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (1999). The Arawak language family. In R. M. W. Dixon & A. Y. Aikhenvald (Eds.), ''The Amazonian languages''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ; . * Campbell, Lyle. (1997). ''American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America''. New York: Oxford University Press. . * Jolkesky, Marcelo. (2016).
Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas
'. Brasilia: UnB. PhD Dissertation
Available here
* Kaufman, Terrence. (1994). The native languages of South America. In C. Mosley & R. E. Asher (Eds.), ''Atlas of the world's languages'' (pp. 46–76). London: Routledge. * Payne, David. (1991). A classification of Maipuran (Arawakan) languages based on shared lexical retentions. In D. C. Derbyshire & G. K. Pullum (Eds.), ''Handbook of Amazonian languages'' (Vol. 3, pp. 355–499). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. * Derbyshire, Desmond C. (1992). Arawakan languages. In W. Bright (Ed.), ''International encyclopedia of linguistics'' (Vol. 1, pp. 102–105). New Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Kaufman, Terrence. (1990). Language history in South America: What we know and how to know more. In D. L. Payne (Ed.), ''Amazonian linguistics: Studies in lowland South American languages'' (pp. 13–67). Austin: University of Texas Press. . * Migliazza, Ernest C.; & Campbell, Lyle. (1988). ''Panorama general de las lenguas indígenas en América'' (pp. 223). Historia general de América (Vol. 10). Caracas: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia. * Byrne, James. (1885). ''General principles of the structure of language'' – Grammatical Sktches: Arawak (pp. 198 ''ff'') * Brinton, D. G., (1871)
''The Arawak Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations''
Philadelphia: McCalla & Stavely. (pp. 18)

External links

Etnolingüística: online resources on native South American languages
{{South American languages Proposed language families