Matis is a language spoken by the indigenous Matis people in the state of Amazonas 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 ...

History

The Fundação Nacional do Índio (Funai) was a key player in establishing first contact with the Matis community. After the construction of a major highway through the region, Funai began receiving reports of uncontacted peoples in the region. The Matis before this point in time were isolated and removed from any outside, non-indigenous contact and this highway acted as a path to resources, which would later assist the Matis, as well as other indigenous peoples. Funai went on to establish the Ituí Indigenous Attraction Post (IAP) on the bank of the

Ituí river The Ituí River is a river of the upper Amazon Basin. It traverses some 370 km of the Atalaia do Norte municipality in the Amazonas state of north-western Brazil. It drains a very low gradient, dropping hardly 100 m over its whole extent, whi ...

in 1974. Reports on the first contact with the Matis people conflict, but this event likely happened in 1975 or 1976. Soon after this period, the Matis began making occasional visits to the Ituí IAP, where they were given resources such as metal tools and animals. By 1987, contacts between Funai and the Matis were becoming frequent and the Matis people had already suffered many cases of the

flu Influenza, commonly known as "the flu", is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These symptom ...

. The spread of foreign diseases like

influenza Influenza, commonly known as "the flu", is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These symptom ...

and measles intensified with the growing presence of rubber tappers and

loggers Lumberjacks are mostly North American workers in the logging industry who perform the initial harvesting and transport of trees for ultimate processing into forest products. The term usually refers to loggers in the era (before 1945 in the Uni ...

in the region, and lack of warning and medical aid from the IAP. Debates surround the actual number of indigenous Matis that died from exposure to foreign disease, but probable figures state that 35-50% of the population succumbed, with children and elders severely impacted. The Matis were later relocated by Funai to the Boeiro creek region, and this change of location coupled with the change in demographics caused the group to fragment into two distinct groups which are still present today. A new scarcity of available ingredients for preparing traditional substances for hunting and ritual caused the group to change from highly motile to predominantly sedentary, and created much conflict within the group. Along with the introduction of illness to indigenous Matis communities, there has been recent conflict between the Matis and

Korubo The Korubo or Korubu, also known as the Dslala, are an indigenous people of Brazil living in the lower Vale do Javari in the western Amazon Basin. The group calls themselves 'Dslala', and in Portuguese they are referred to as ''caceteiros'' (cl ...

communities living in the

Vale do Javari Vale do Javari (English language: Javari Valley) is one of the largest indigenous territories in Brazil, encompassing 85,444.82 km 2 (32,990 mi 2) – an area larger than Austria. It is named after the Javari River, the most important ...

.Arisi, B., & Milanez, F. (2017). Isolados e ilhados: Indigenismo e conflitos no Vale do Javari, Amazônia. ''Estudos Ibero-Americanos,43''(1), 49. The Matis in the twentieth century have been said to have abducted two women from the Korubo community due to low numbers of women in theirs. The Korubo peoples had since attacked ancestors of the Matis (Txami) who returned to the

Coari Coari (''Choary'') is a Brazilian municipality in the Amazon region. Location The municipal seat of Coari is one of the largest cities of the Amazonas state. It is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Coari. The area has reserves of oil an ...

River to start their own plantations. The relatively recent conflict between these groups has led to long lasting grudges, abductions, and murder. The acceptance of outside influences varies depending on the generations within the community.BBC (n.d.). Tribe - Matis. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/tribe/tribes/matis/#further1 Elders are more hesitant, while other modern Matis generations are more receptive to schools and modern-day influences. The Centro do Trabalho Indigenista (CTI) is an educational centre that was established in 1979 to educate current and future generations of members of the Pano language family. To ensure cultural survival for the Matis as well as other indigenous groups in the Vale de Javari, the Centro do Trabalho Indigenista uses professors who have been elected by local indigenous peoples to properly ensure their cultural values, day-to-day activities, and more importantly, languages are preserved to their standards.

Linguistics

Phonology

Morphology

Matis language possesses a complex morphological structure similar to that of other Pano languages. Due to the high prevalence of

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone ar ...

s in Matis language, it is considered by most linguists to be a

polysynthetic language In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able to ...

. There are two general classes of morphemes used in Matis: simple and complex. Simple morphemes are those that denote a single meaning; complex morphemes contain multiple meanings. The morphological processes used in Matis are

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy''. Particu ...

ation, suffixation, reduplication, and atonalization, with prefixation utilized very rarely and the latter three being more common.

Nouns

Nouns in the Matis language constitute an open class and are characterized by their case,

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures us ...

, and

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers ...

. The ergative,

absolutive In grammar, the absolutive case (abbreviated ) is the case of nouns in ergative–absolutive languages that would generally be the subjects of intransitive verbs or the objects of transitive verbs in the translational equivalents of nominative� ...

and

comitative In grammar, the comitative case (; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case that denotes accompaniment. In English, the preposition "with", in the sense of "in company with" or "together with", plays a substantially similar role (other uses of "with", ...

cases are used for nouns.

= Pronouns

= Matis contains ergative,

, and

object pronoun In linguistics, an object pronoun is a personal pronoun that is used typically as a grammatical object: the direct or indirect object of a verb, or the object of a preposition. Object pronouns contrast with subject pronouns. Object pronouns in Eng ...

s. Additionally, in the Matis language there are

personal pronoun Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...

s, demonstrative pronouns,

reflexive pronoun A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun (its antecedent) within the same sentence. In the English language specifically, a reflexive pronoun will end in ''-self'' or ''-selves'', and refer to a previously na ...

possessive pronouns A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict owner ...

and

interrogative pronouns An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', ''who (pronoun), who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in ...

. Examples: :''Personal Pronoun:'' ''mi'' (you) :''Demonstrative Pronoun:'' ''nekit''- (that) :''Reflexive Pronoun:'' Reflexive pronoun is formed with the use of the suffix (–''ben''), e.g. ''mi+ben'' (yourself) :''Possessive Pronoun:'' ''nuki''- (ours) :''Interrogative Pronoun:'' ''awɨ''- (what)

Prefixes

Prefixation in Matis is much less common than suffixation and it is only used in two instances. The first is the prefix , which simply means "slightly" or "somewhat". The second type of prefixation used in Matis relates to different parts of the body through the use of 27 different prefixes that can be used to modify verbs, nouns, and adjectives. This type of morpheme is also common in other languages of the Pano family. In Example Two, the morpheme is created for the word "taɨ", or "foot". This prefix is attached to the verb, along with other morphemes, to imply that the cutting, which happened in the past, was done with relation to the foot. : taɨ: "foot" Many of these prefixes possess multiple meanings apart from body parts depending on their attachment and the context of the sentence. A good example of this, as shown in Example Three, is the morpheme , which denotes relation to "ana", or "tongue". However, this morpheme can also denote that a verb is taking place on the "interior" or "inside of" something. :ana: "tongue", "interior", "inside of" Prefixes can refer to parts of the body in a literal or metaphorical sense. For example, as shown in Example Four, the morpheme , which is derived from the word "bɨmadɨn" or "face", can also metaphorically mean "in front of" in certain contexts. :bɨmadɨn: "face", "in front"

Suffixes

In the Matis language, suffixes are used more frequently than prefixes. Suffixes are the most common morphemes to add to the end of root words derived from nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Nouns and verbs can use multiple suffixes, however adjectives and adverbs use only one. To elaborate on the use of suffixes in the Matis language, this section will discuss ergative/absolutive cases that are used frequently within the Matis language to demonstrate the complexity of suffixation in one of many linguistic areas. In Matis, ergativity is marked by the morpheme suffix "-n" and the absolutive marked with a "∅". When there is a final ending of a nominal root word that ends in a vowel, the ergative suffix to be applied would be "-n". This is demonstrated in example one. Another suffix morpheme phenomenon with ergativity is when a root word ends in a nasal sound or "n" - or when the root word ends in an alveolar occlusive consonant such as "t", the initial morpheme "-n" allomorphs into "-an" which is conditioned by the ending of the root word. This is demonstrated in example two. When the root word ends in all other consonants, the ergative suffix changes to "-ɨn". This suggests that the two allomorphs of the ergative rely heavily on the ending of the root word, specifically the type of consonant or vowel being used to apply the appropriate suffix. This is demonstrated in example three.

Verbs

Verbs in Matis fall under two tenses: time which has not yet passed and time that has passed. This second category can be broken up into subcategories which detail more precisely how much time has passed. To distinguish how much time has passed, Matis uses words such as ''nebi'' (now), ''uxtokin'' (yesterday) and ''inden'' (long time ago/ back in the day).

Case and agreement

Matis is an ergative-absolutive language. The subject of

intransitive In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are ...

and

transitive verb A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'cleaned' in ''Donald cleaned the window''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'panicked' in ''Donald panicked''. Transiti ...

s are marked in the same way. The agent is what stays fixed depending on the sentence structure. Verb Tense Verbs in the Matis language are broken down into two tenses: time not yet passed, and past. The past tense is broken down into three categories: time immediately passed, time recently passed, and distant time passed. Past tense: suffixes –a, -bo and –bo are used in the verb and are tied to the time in which the action occurred. Speakers use temporal words: nebi (now), uxtokin (yesterday), inden (longtime ago, back in the day) to reference the time of the action.

Syntax

Case

Matis is an ergative-absolutive language. Matis in particular uses

allomorph In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant phonetic form of a morpheme, or, a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning. The term ''allomorph'' describes the realization of phonological variations for a specif ...

suffixes to distinguish the ergativity using "-n", and "-Ø" when marking the

absolutive case In grammar, the absolutive case (abbreviated ) is the case of nouns in ergative–absolutive languages that would generally be the subjects of intransitive verbs or the objects of transitive verbs in the translational equivalents of nominative� ...

. Additional allomorphed suffixes can be applied to mark both cases when specific grammatical rules apply, such as when a word ends in a

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...

or specific

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced ...

. In Matis, the following syntactic orders are observed: "AOV", "OAV" and "AVO" in sentences constructed with

s, and "SV" and "VS" is in sentences constructed with

intransitive verb In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs a ...

s. Only one can be considered the dominant order, which is AOV for sentences with transitive verbs and "SV" (at times "VS") for sentences with intransitive verbs. However, in transitive sentences in the Matis language, the structure "OVA" is not used. One main observable ergative-absolutive feature of the Matis language is the marking of the object in the transitive sentences (tʃawa -Ø and txawa -Ø) and the subject of the intransitive sentences (wapa -Ø / awat -Ø) in the same manner. In both formations in which sentences are utilizing transitive verbs, the agent remained constant. The suffixed allomorphs used to distinguish the two are using "-n" (marking ergativity) and "-Ø" (marking absolutive).

= Transitive sentences

= Intransitive sentences

Semantics

Quantification

Quantifiers in Matis are a

closed class In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ass ...

of words that can be used to modify nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives. The functions of quantifiers differ depending on their syntactic position. Quantifiers placed after a noun always function in quantification. However, when a quantifier is placed after an adverb or adjective, it functions as an intensifier. Some quantifiers are restricted to either countable or uncountable nouns, while others can be used in conjunction with both. The four quantifiers used in the Matis language are as follows: : ''"many, in large quantity"'' (used with both countable and uncountable nouns) :kimo: ''"much"'' (used only with uncountable nouns) :dabɨtsɨk: ''"few"'' (used with countable nouns) :papitsɨk: ''"little, small amount"'' (used with uncountable nouns)

Language and documentation

Matis is the language spoken by the

Matis The Matis people (also called Matsë in their own native language) are an indigenous people of Brazil. The Matis are commonly named as the Jaguar people by tourists and filmmakers, but they do not like to be called like this. They live in three ...

ethnic group historically located in the indigenous reserve

on the

Ituí River The Ituí River is a river of the upper Amazon Basin. It traverses some 370 km of the Atalaia do Norte municipality in the Amazonas state of north-western Brazil. It drains a very low gradient, dropping hardly 100 m over its whole extent, whi ...

in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, on the border of Brazil and Peru. As of 2014 the population of Matis peoples had reached as high as 457. There are currently an estimated 350 Matis speakers. Matis language has a high level of transmission, especially among women and children, who are generally monolingual in Matis only.

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Port ...

is spoken by older male members of the Matis for trade purposes.

Name

Because Matis is the non-indigenous name given to this community, some members prefer to refer to themselves by their original name, ''matses''. There is another indigenous group called the Mayoruna that is of close linguistic and geographical proximity to the Matis and also goes by the name Matses. To avoid confusion of the two groups, most literature about the Matis refers to them as Matis. The word ''matses'' means "human being" in the Matis language, and is often used in the language to demonstrate kinship groupings.

Language family

The Matis language is part of the Panoan (Pano) language stock, a family of about 32 languages and 40,000-50,000 total speakers.Fleck, D. W. (2013). ''Panoan Languages and Linguistics''. New York (N.Y.): American Museum of Natural History. Only 18 Panoan languages are still spoken today, six of which are falling out of everyday use. It is the fifth largest language family in South America, with speakers of Pano languages living in

Perú , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = National seal , national_motto = "Firm and Happy fo ...

, and

Bolivia , image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg , flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center , flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...

. Within the Pano language family, Matis language lies on the Mayoruna branch along with three other extant and four extinct languages. Matis is the most linguistically divergent extant language in the Mayoruna branch. Due to the mutual intelligibility of many Pano languages, most speakers of Matis can also understand languages spoken by the Kulina, Matses (Mayoruna), and the

. The Marubo acted as interpreters between the Matis and

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during the first contacts with Funai in the 1970s.

Documentation

A key researcher and publisher of many works on Matis language is Vitória Regina Spanghero Ferreira. Her master's thesis was a

phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

and

phonological Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

description of Matis language that discussed

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 and

allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...

syllable structure A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "b ...

, phonological processes, and

accentuation In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as ...

patterns of Matis. Ferreira's doctoral thesis, published in 2005, is a very detailed

lexical Lexical may refer to: Linguistics * Lexical corpus or lexis, a complete set of all words in a language * Lexical item, a basic unit of lexicographical classification * Lexicon, the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge * Lexica ...

study of Matis language that includes a 1,547-word Portuguese-Matis dictionary. The dissertation goes into detail on the

lexicography Lexicography is the study of lexicons, and is divided into two separate academic disciplines. It is the art of compiling dictionaries. * Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries. * Theoret ...

semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and compu ...

, and

morphosyntax In linguistics, morphology () is the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words such as stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Morp ...

of Matis language as well as giving overviews of Matis and Pano

ethno-history Ethnohistory is the study of cultures and indigenous peoples customs by examining historical records as well as other sources of information on their lives and history. It is also the study of the history of various ethnic groups that may or may ...

.Ferreira, V. (2005). ''Estúdio Lexical da Língua Matis: Subsídios para um Dicionário Bilíngüe'' (Doctoral thesis, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2000). Campinas: UNICAMP/IEL. Rogério Vicente Ferreira, a researcher at the

Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul The Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul ( pt, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, UFMS), is a public university located in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil. It has, in addition to the main campus in Campo Grande (the State ...

, has also produced a number of key texts regarding the Matis language. Among the most descriptive is a thorough morphosyntactic description of the language that discusses phonetic and morphological aspects,

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Organism, Living creatures (including people ...

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering q ...

adjective In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ...

s, and closed class words of the Matis language. His master's thesis also goes over morphosyntactic elements of Matis language. The paper discusses various classes of words, the order of constituents, marcation of the

ergative case In grammar, the ergative case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that identifies the noun as the agent of a transitive verb in ergative–absolutive languages. Characteristics In such languages, the ergative case is typically marked (most ...

, and general themes in Matis syntax.Ferreira, R. (2001). ''Língua Matis: Aspetos Descritivos da Morfossintaxe'' (Master's thesis, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2001). Campinas: UNICAMP/IEL. The paper builds on phonological work done by V. Ferreira (2000). A masters dissertation studying the functional-typological system of

word formation In linguistics, word formation is an ambiguous term that can refer to either: * the processes through which words can change (i.e. morphology), or * the creation of new lexemes in a particular language Morphological A common method of word for ...

in eight languages of the Pano family, including Matis, was published by Raphael Augusto Oliveira Barbosa. The paper features a thorough comparison of the semantic and morphological properties of word formation among the different Pano languages, with a specific focus on

affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ...

ation, reduplication and

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature * Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include ...

. While no large ethnography specifically about the Matis community has been published, information about their culture and customs can be gained through multiple ethnographic studies and comparisons written about larger regional or linguistic groupings of languages. ''Javari'' details the eight ethnic groups living around the Vale do Javari. Barbara Maisonnave Arisi's 2007 master's thesis studies the relationship between the Matis and the Korubo, both relatively isolated groups living in the Vale do Javari.Arisi, Barbara Maisonnave. 2007. Matis e Korubo: Contat e índios isolados, relações entre povos no Vale do Javari, Amazônia. (MA thesis, Florianópolis: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina; 147pp.) All previously listed literature from Rogérico and Vitória Ferreira include ethno-histories of the Matis people as background for the studies, most notably in the text ''Estúdio Lexical da Língua Matís: Subsídios para um Dicionário Bilíngüe'', which contains photos and descriptions of specific cultural practices. The

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documentary TV series ''

Tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to confl ...

'' featured the Matis in an episode in 2007.

References

* * Rogério Spanghero Ferreira. Língua Matis (Pano): Aspectos Descritivos da Morfossintaxe. Lincom Europa, 2001. Munich

{{Pano-Tacanan languages Indigenous languages of Western Amazonia Panoan languages