Geographic
distribution: Amazon | Glottolog: nada1235 | |
Linguistic classification: One of the world's primary language families Subdivisions: Nadëb–Kuyawi
Daw
Hupda–Yuhup
? Kakua–Nukak | ||
The Nadahup languages, a.k.a. Makú (Macú) or Vaupés–Japurá, form a small language family in Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela. The name Maku is pejorative, being derived from an Arawakan word meaning "without speech". Nadahup is an acronym of the constituent languages.
Contents
The Nadahup family should not be confused with several other languages which go by the name Maku, including the Maku language of Roraima. There are proposals linking this unclassified language with Nadahup, but also with other languages.
Languages
Nadahup consists of about four languages, based on mutual intelligibility. Nadeb and Kuyawi, Hup and Yahup, and Nukak and Kakwa, however, share 90% of their vocabulary and are mutually intelligible, and so are separate languages only in a sociolinguistic sense. These four branches are not close: Although the family was first suggested in 1906, only 300 cognates have been found, which include pronouns but no other grammatical forms.
Nadëb may be the most divergent; of the other languages, there is disagreement on the placement of Nïkâk. Martins (1999) propose two classifications, pending further research:
However, Epps considers Hup and Yahup to be distinct languages, and maintains that the inclusion of the poorly attested Nukak and Kakwa has not been demonstrated and is in fact highly dubious:
Typology
Dâw and Hup—especially Hup—have undergone grammatical restructuring under Tucano influence. They have lost prefixes but acquired suffixes from grammaticalized verb roots. They also have heavily monosyllabic roots, as can be seen by the reduction of Portuguese loan words to their stressed syllable, as in Dâw yẽl’ "money", from Portuguese dinheiru. Nadëb and Nïkâk, on the other hand, have polysyllabic roots. Nïkâk allows a single prefix per word, whereas Nadëb, which lies outside the Vaupés language area, is heavily prefixing and polysynthetic: Up to nine prefixes per word (which is highly unusual for the Amazon), with incorporation of nouns, prepositions, and adverbs.
Genetic relations
Rivet (from 1920), Kaufman (1994) and Pozzobon (1997) include Puinave within the family. However, many of the claimed cognate sets are spurious.
Henley, Mattéi-Müller and Reid (1996) present evidence that the Hodï language (a.k.a. Yuwana) is related.
Puinavean forms part of a hypothetical Macro-Puinavean family along with the Katukinan and Arutani–Sape families and the Maku language of Roraima.
Macro-Puinavean is included in Joseph Greenberg's larger Macro-Tucanoan stock, but this is generally rejected. Another larger grouping is Morris Swadesh's Macro-Makú.