Mawayana language

Mawayana (Mahuayana), also known as Mapidian (Maopidyán), is a moribund Arawakan language of northern South America. It used to be spoken by Mawayana people living in ethnic Wai-wai and Tiriyó villages in Brazil, Guyana and Suriname. As of 2015, the last two speakers of the language are living in Kwamalasamutu.

Mawayana
Mapidian
Native to	Brazil, Guyana and Suriname
Native speakers	2 (2015)
Language family	Arawakan North Arawak Rio Branco (Wapishanan) Mawayana
Dialects	Mawakwa?
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: mzx – Mawayana mpw – Mapidian (duplicate code)
Glottolog	mapi1252  Mapidian-Mawayana mawa1268  Mawakwa
ELP	Mawayana

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 least 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.

Consonants

Mawayana consonant phonemes:

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	plain		t	ʧ	k	ʔ
	implosive	ɓ	ɗ	ɗʲ
Fricative				ʃ
Rhotic			ɾ
Nasal		m	n
Glide				j	w

Vowels

Mawayana vowel phonemes:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u~o
Close-mid	e
Open		a

Vowels have both nasal and length contrast.

Morphology

Mawayana personal affixes:

	singular	plural
1	n-/m- -na	wa- -wi
2	ɨ-/i- -i	ɨ- -wiko
3	ɾ(ɨ/iʔ)- -sɨ	na- -nu
3 refl.	a-

Mawayana verbal affixes:

thematic	-ta, -ɗa, -ɓa
present	-e
reciprocal	-(a)ka
adjectival	-ɾe, -ke

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.

n-kataba-sï

1A-grab.PST-3O

n-kataba-sï

1A-grab.PST-3O

'I grabbed him.'

tõwã-sï

sleep.PST-3S

tõwã-sï

sleep.PST-3S

'He fell asleep.'

nnu

1PN

a-na

when-1S

mauɗa

die

chika-dza

NEG-COMPL

Mawayana

mawayana

nnu a-na mauɗa chika-dza Mawayana

1PN when-1S die NEG-COMPL mawayana

'When I die there will be no Mawayana left at all.'

References

• Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (1999). "The Arawak language family". In Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.; Dixon, R.M.W. (eds.). The Amazonian languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 65–106.
• Carlin, Eithne B (2006). "Feeling the need. The borrowing of Cariban functional categories into Mawayana (Arawak)". In Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.; Dixon, R.M.W. (eds.). Grammars in contact: A cross-linguistic typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Carlin, Eithne B (2011). "Nested identities in the Southern Guyana-Surinam corner". In Hornborg, Alf; Hill, Jonathan D. (eds.). Ethnicity in ancient Amazonia: Reconstructing past identities from archaeology, linguistics, and ethnohistory. University Press of Colorado. pp. 225–236.
• Carlin, Eithne B; Boven, Karin (2002). "The native population: Migration and identities". In Carlin, Eithne B.; Arends, Jacques (eds.). Atlas of the languages of Suriname. KITLV Press. pp. 11–45.
• Carlin, Eithne B; Mans, Jimmy (2013). "Movement through time in the southern Guianas: deconstructing the Amerindian kaleidoscope". In Carlin, Eithne B.; Leglise, Isabelle; Migge, Bettina; et al. (eds.). In and out of Suriname: Language, mobility, and identity. Caribbean Series. Leiden: Brill.
• Mans, Jimmy; Carlin, Eithne B. (2015). Movement through Time in the Southern Guianas: Deconstructing the Amerindian Kaleidoscope. Leiden: Brill.
• Ramirez, Henri (2001). Línguas Arawak da Amazônia setentrional (in Portuguese). Manaus: Universidade Federal do Amazonas.

External links

• The Last of the Mawayana by Unravel magazine