Tenetehára is a Tupi–Guarani language spoken in the state of

Maranhão Maranhão () is a state in Brazil. Located in the country's Northeast Region, it has a population of about 7 million and an area of . Clockwise from north, it borders on the Atlantic Ocean for 2,243 km and the states of Piauí, Tocantins and ...

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 ...

. Sociolinguistically, it is two languages, each spoken by the

Guajajara The Guajajara are an indigenous peoples of Brazil, indigenous people in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. They are one of the most numerous indigenous groups in Brazil, with an estimated 13,100 individuals living on indigenous land. History In ...

and the

Tembé The Tembé, also Timbé and Tenetehara, are an indigenous people of Brazil, living along the Maranhão and Gurupi Rivers, in the state of Amazonas and Pará. Their lands have been encroached and settled by farmers and loggers, who do so illega ...

people, though these are mutually intelligible. Tembé was spoken by less than a quarter of its ethnic population of 820 in 2000; Guajajara, on the other hand, is more robust, being spoken by two-thirds of its 20,000 people.

History

Tenetehára speakers were first contacted in 1615 by a French expedition in the margins of the Pindaré river. They clashed against slaver raids until Jesuit missions were set up among them (1653-1755). After the Jesuits were expelled from Brazil, the various Tenetehára groups went back to a life with very limited contact with the settler society. At the end of the 19th century the members of the community started to be employed as collectors of natural resources. After some abuse by white settlers in their vicinity, in 1901 the Guajajara group revolted against a nearby Capuchin missions and expelled them from their land. They have been in continuous conflict with clandestine loggers and illegal settlements in their land.

Phonetics and phonology

Tenetehára has a total of 21 phonemes: 14 consonants and 7 vowels. Each of the consonantal phonemes occurs as the initial C in CV and CVC syllables, while each of the vowels occurs as the nucleus in the four syllable patterns. Any phoneme of the class /t k m n ŋ w z r/ may occur in the syllable and word final C position, while /p k^w c ŋ^w ' h/ are limited in their distribution in that they do not occur in the final C position. Similarly, /ŋ ŋ^w/ have a somewhat limited distribution in that they never occur word-initially. * /ts/ is heard as ʃbefore close front vowels. * /z/ is heard as before a consonant or in word-final position. * /i, ə/ can be heard as �, ɐbefore /ŋ/ or in coda position.

Tembé

* /s/ can have an allophone of s and can also be heard as ʃbefore front vowels. * /d/ can have three allophones , ʒ, dʒ and can be heard as when before a consonant or in word-final position. * /e, ɔ/ can have short allophones �, ɔ

Syntax

Tenetehára has a verb-subject-object word order. Verbs are marked with person prefixes that reference the subject of the clause: There are three verb classes, corresponding to transitive, intransitive and stative verbs. Each of these has a different set of verbal prefixes to mark the subject. Even though it is a verb-initial language, Tenetehára has postpositions instead of prepositions, as would be expected cross-linguistically: A small group of adverbial words, that relate the sentence to its context, can appear in the first position in the clause, followed by the verb and the rest of the sentence.

References

External links

* * {{Tupian languages Tupi–Guarani languages Languages of Brazil Verb–subject–object languages