Native to Brazil Native speakers 1,300 (2006) ISO 639-3 mbl | Region Minas Gerais Language family Maxakalían
Maxakalí Glottolog west2636 | |
Maxakalí (Yĩy'ax 'language', Tikmũ'ũn Yĩy'ax 'Maxakalí language') is a Maxakalían language spoken in fourteen villages in Minas Gerais, Brazil, by fewer than a thousand people.
Contents
Dialects
Mason identifies six varieties of Maxakali. All but Maxakalí proper are extinct:
Phonology
Maxakalí has five vowels, occurring in both oral and nasal form.
Word order
The most common word order in Maxakalí is SOV.
"The child drinks milk"Morphosyntactic alignment
Maxakalí is an ergative language. The ergative case covers transitive subjects as well as indirect objects. The absolutive case covers intransitive subjects and transitive objects.
"We (excluding you) are going to the market to buy you (indirect object) some food."Suppletive verb number
For some verbs, number is shown not by conjugation, but by suppletive verb stems. These verb stems can show number differences either for the subject or for the object.
Subject number
"The man sits/sat." "The men sit/sat."Object number
"The man killed a monkey." "The man killed the monkeys."Noun compounding
Maxakalí nouns readily form compounds, here are some examples:
"lips" "salt" "finger"