Palikúr (

Brazilian Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese (' ), also Portuguese of Brazil (', ) or South American Portuguese (') is the set of varieties of the Portuguese language native to Brazil and the most influential form of Portuguese worldwide. It is spoken by almost all of ...

: ''Palicur'', French: ''Palikur'') is an

Arawakan language 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 ...

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 ...

and

French Guiana French Guiana ( or ; french: link=no, Guyane ; gcr, label=French Guianese Creole, Lagwiyann ) is an overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France on the northern Atlantic ...

. Knowledge of French and

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 common, and French Guianese Creole is used as the common language among the tribes in the area and with the local population. Palikúr is considered endangered in French Guiana and vulnerable in Brazil.

Phonology

Consonants

* Plosives in word-final position are heard unreleased as ̚, t̚, k̚, b̚, d̚, ɡ̚ * /p/ can be heard as or when before close vowels /i, u/, or within intervocalic positions. * /t, d, n/ when before front vowels /i, ĩ/ are heard as palatal and post-alveolar sounds ʃ, dʒ, ɲ

Vowels

* /e, o/ are heard as �, ɔwithin different positions. * /a/ is heard as a nasalized central vowel sound �̃when preceding a nasal consonant.

Loanwords

Palikúr has several

loanwords A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...

, many of which are wildlife-related, from the Carib language, including:

Pronouns

Palikúr has dependent and independent

personal pronouns 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 ...

. The verb marks the object by using suffixes, but not the subject, which must appear in the form of a nominal group or as an independent pronoun. This

affixation 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 ar ...

of only the object and not of the subject is linguistically very rare: the norm is the affixation for both or for only the subject. The noun complement is marked by a possessive prefix.

References

External links

* Arawakan languages Languages of Brazil Languages of French Guiana {{Arawakan-lang-stub