Subdivisions: Macro-Gê
Tupian
Carib | Glottolog: None | |
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Geographic
distribution: eastern South America, Caribbean Linguistic classification: Proposed language family | ||
Je–Tupi–Carib ("Katuje") is a proposed language family composed of the Macro-Je (or Macro-Gê), Tupian and Cariban languages of South America.
Rodrigues (2000) finds evidence relating Macro-Je to Tupian, and Eduardo Ribeiro of the University of Chicago, who has worked with Macro-Je and Tupian languages, has found further that these families share irregular morphology with each other and with Cariban. Shared grammatical irregularities are strong supporting evidence for putative language families, as they are unlikely to be borrowed or to be due to chance.
Comparison
In the following table the personal marks of different phylogenetic groups in the "Je-Tupí-Carib hypothesis" are shown:
In this table the forms marked with (A) refer to ergative/agentive case, and the forms marked with (O) are referred to absolutive/pacient/experiencer case.