Native to Guyana Dialects Mawakwa? | Native speakers 2 (2013) | |
Language family Arawakan
North Arawak
Rio Branco (Wapishanan)
Mawayana ISO 639-3 Either:
mzx – Mawayana
mpw – Mapidian (duplicate code) Glottolog mapi1252 (Mapidian)
mawa1268 (Mawakwa) | ||
Mawayana (Mahuayana), also known as Mapidian (Maopidyán), is a moribund Arawakan language of Guyana.
Contents
Classification
Aikhenvald (1999) lists Mawayana (and possibly Mawakwa as a dialect) together with Wapishana under a Rio Branco (North-Arawak) branch of the Arawakan family. Carlin (2006:314) notes that Mawayana "is closely related to Wapishana" and according to Ramirez (2001:530) they share at 47% of their lexicon.
Phonology
Mawayana has, among its consonants, two implosives, /ɓ/ and /ɗ/, and what has been described as a "retroflex fricativised rhotic", represented with ⟨rž⟩, that it shares with Wapishana. The vowel systems contains four vowels (/i-e, a, ɨ, u-o/), each of which has a nasalised counterpart.
Morphosyntax
Mawayana has a polysynthetic morphology, mainly head-marking and with suffixes, although there are pronominal prefixes. The verbal arguments are indexed on the verb through subject suffixes on intransitive verbs, while agent prefixes and object suffixes on transitive verbs (Carlin 2006:319).
n-kataba-sï 1A-grab.PAST-3O 'I grabbed him.' tõwã-sï sleep.PAST-3S 'He fell asleep.'