Maku language of Auari

Maku-Auari
Maku-Auari
Native to	Roraima, Brazil
Region	Brazilian–Venezuelan border
Extinct	2000–2002
Language family	Kalianan ? Maku-Auari;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xak
Glottolog	maku1246
	This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Maku or Mako (Spanish Macú, Portuguese Máku) is an unclassified language spoken on the Brazil–Venezuela border in Roraima along the upper Uraricoera and lower Auari rivers, west of Boa Vista. 300 years ago, the Macu territory had been between the Padamo and Cunucunuma rivers to the southeast.

The last speaker died between 2000 and 2002. Aryon Rodrigues and Ernesto Migliazza have worked on the language, and there is enough material for a grammar, though as of 2010 this had not been published.

Name

No proper name for the language is recorded. Macu is not a proper name, but rather an Arawakan term for unintelligible languages and people held in servitude in the Orinoco region. (See Maku people for a partial list.) The stress is typically given on the final syllable, Makú (Migliazza, Fabré). However, in order to distinguish the language of the Auari from the many other languages given this name, the stress is sometimes shifted to the first syllable: Máku (Maciel, Dixon & Aikhenvald) or Máko (Campbell 2012).^[1] The disambiguator Maku-Auari is used by Hammerström.^[2]

Genetic relations

Suggested genetic relations involving Macu include

with Arawakan
with Warao
within a Kalianan grouping with Arutani–Sape (a.k.a. Makú)
within a Macro-Puinavean grouping with Nadahup (a.k.a. Makú), Katukinan, & Arutani–Sape

Kaufman (1990) finds the Kalianan proposal "promising", though he is now dated.

Language contact

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Sape, Arutani, and Warao languages, as well as the Saliba-Hodi, Tikuna-Yuri, Katukina-Katawixi, and Arawa language families due to contact.^[3]

Phonology

Roraima Macu has six oral vowels, /i y ɨ u e a/, and four nasal vowels, /ĩ ũ ẽ ã/. Length is contrastive, but only on an initial CV syllable of a polysyllabic word. The most complex syllable is CCVC. There is no contrastive stress or tone.

Consonants
		Bilabial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	voiceless	p	t			k	ʔ
Stop	voiced	b	d
Affricate			t͡s
Fricative			s	ʃ		x	h
Nasal		m	n
Approximant					j	w
Lateral flap			(ɺ)

Consonants are stops /p b t d k ʔ/, the affricate /ts/, fricatives /s ʃ x h/, nasals /m n/, the lateral "r" (perhaps /ɺ/?), and the approximants /w j/.

There is a lateral consonant "r," probably the alveolar flap /ɺ/.

Grammar

Macu is highly polysynthetic and predominantly suffixing. There is clusivity but no genders or classifiers. The TAM system is very complex.

Vocabulary

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Máku.^[4]

gloss	Máku
one	nukuzamuké
two	bãtá
three	shünãlyá
head	tsi-gáte
eye	tsis-kóte
tooth	tse-um
man	lásepa
water	náme
fire	níheː
sun	kélé
maize	lükü
jaguar	zówi

Bibliography

Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
Campbell & Grondona (2012). The Indigenous Languages of South America
Dixon & Aikhenvald (1999). "Máku", in The Amazonian Languages (pp. 361–362)
Fabre, Alain. 2005. Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos: Makú.[1]
Kaufman, Terrence (1990). Language history in South America: What we know and how to know more. In D. L. Payne (Ed.), Amazonian linguistics: Studies in lowland South American languages (pp. 13–67). Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-70414-3.
Kaufman, Terrence (1994). The native languages of South America. In C. Mosley & R. E. Asher (Eds.), Atlas of the world's languages (pp. 46–76). London: Routledge.
Koch-Grünberg, Theodor (1922). "Die Volkgruppierung zwischen Rio Branco, Orinoco, Rio Negro und Yapurá", in Festschrift Eduard Seler (pp. 205–266). Stuttgart.
Maciel, Iraguacema (1991). Alguns aspectos fonológicos e morfológicos da língua Máku. (Dissertation, Brasília: LALI, UnB)
Migliazza, Ernesto (1965). "Fonología Makú", Boletim do MPEG. Antropología 25:1–17.

———— (1966). "Esbôço sintático de um corpus da língua Makú", Boletim do MPEG. Antropología 32:1–38.

———— (1978). "Makú, Sapé and Uruak languages. Current status and basic lexicon", AL 20/3:133–140.

References

^ Campbell, Lyle (2012). "Classification of the indigenous languages of South America". In Grondona, Verónica; Campbell, Lyle (eds.). The Indigenous Languages of South America. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 2. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 59–166. ISBN 9783110255133.
^ "A note on the Maco [wpc] (Piaroan) language of the lower Ventuari, Venezuela". Cadernos de Etnolingüística volume 3, número 1, February 2011
^ Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho de Valhery (2016). Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas (Ph.D. dissertation) (2 ed.). Brasília: University of Brasília.
^ Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Classification of South American Indian languages. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center.

[Campbell-SAmerica-1] Campbell, Lyle (2012). "Classification of the indigenous languages of South America". In Grondona, Verónica; Campbell, Lyle (eds.). The Indigenous Languages of South America. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 2. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 59–166. ISBN 9783110255133.

[2] "A note on the Maco [wpc] (Piaroan) language of the lower Ventuari, Venezuela". Cadernos de Etnolingüística volume 3, número 1, February 2011

[Jolkesky-2016-3] Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho de Valhery (2016). Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas (Ph.D. dissertation) (2 ed.). Brasília: University of Brasília.

[Loukotka-4] Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Classification of South American Indian languages. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]