Máku , also spelled ''Mako'' (Spanish ''Macú''),
and in the language itself Jukude, is an
unclassified language
An unclassified language is a language whose genetic affiliation to other languages has not been established. Languages can be unclassified for a variety of reasons, mostly due to a lack of reliable data but sometimes due to the confounding inf ...
and likely
language isolate once spoken on the
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
–
Venezuela
Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...
border in
Roraima along the upper
Uraricoera and lower
Auari rivers, west of
Boa Vista, by the ''Jukudeitse''. 300 years ago, the Jukude territory was between the
Padamo and
Cunucunuma rivers to the southwest.
The last speaker, Sinfrônio Magalhães, died in 2000. There are currently no speakers or rememberers of Máku and no-one identifies as Jukude any longer.
Aryon Rodrigues and Ernesto Migliazza, as well as Iraguacema Lima Maciel, worked on the language, and the data was collected into a grammar by Chris Rogers published in 2020.
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Name
The people called themselves ''jukude-itse'' (person-PL) 'people'. When speaking to outsiders, they referred to themselves as or . ''Maku'' ~ ''Mako'' (in Spanish orthography ''Macu'' or ''Maco'') is an Arawakan term for unintelligible languages and people held in servitude in the Orinoco region. (See Maku people Maku (Macu, Máku, Mácu, Makú, Macú) or Maco (Mako, Máko, Macó, Makó) is a pejorative term referring to several hunter-gatherer peoples of the upper Amazon, derived from an Arawakan term ''ma-aku'' "do not speak / without speech". Nimuendajà ...
for a partial list.) While the stress of the word in other languages called 'Maku' may be on either the first or final syllable, as ''Máku''/''Mácu'' or ''Makú''/''Macú'' (Migliazza, Fabré), the word was pronounced with initial stress by the ''jukudeitse'' and so the name is often written with stress on the first syllable: ''Máku'' (Dixon & Aikhenvald (1999), Maciel (1991), and Rogers (2020)) or ''Máko'' (Campbell 2012), though also ''Makú'' or simply ''Maku'' (Migliazza). The disambiguator ''Maku-Auari'' has also been used.
Genetic relations
Suggested genetic relations involving Máku include:
* with Arawakan
* with Warao
* within a Kalianan grouping with Arutani–Sape (a.k.a. Makú)
* within a Macro-Puinavean
Macro-Puinavean is a hypothetical proposal linking some very poorly attested languages to the Nadahup languages, Nadahup family. The Puinave language is sometimes linked specifically with the Nadahup languages and Nukak language, Nukak-Kakwa lang ...
grouping with Nadahup (a.k.a. Makú), Katukinan, and 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.
Phonology
The Máku syllable structure is (C)(C)V(V)(C).
/k/ is voiced to intervocalically and can occasionally be realized as in other environments too.
/j/ is sometimes realized as word-initially before /a u/ or word-medially, as in /jukude/ ‘okudeÌž'person'. It can occasionally be fronted to or .
Nasals assimilate to the place of articulation of the stop they precede.
/w/ is realized as before /i e/. It is realized as ‹or before /y/ (a sequence which only occurs in the word /lymywy/ 'take'). Rogers (2020) does not state that /w/ is realized as ‹before /ɨ/, but provides the example /wɨtsɨ/ ‹É¨tsɨ'mouth'.
/d/ is realized as laminal before – in some words this is in free variation with
/s, ts, n, k/ are palatalized to ƒ, tʃ, ɲ, cbefore /i, y/, while /t, d, l/ become ʲ, dʲ, lʲ
Although there exist minimal pairs between /o/ and /u/, some words show free variation between /u/ and /o/, and is an allophone of /u/ in some environments. Rogers (2020) hypothesizes that these patterns are a result of a diachronic sound change in progress and that /o u/ do not represent separate phonemes synchronically.
Apart from the sequences o u~aoand a as well as /ai oi/ j ojwithin a word stem, vowel-vowel sequences are resolved by deleting the first vowel of the sequence, e.g. /teana/ ana'I smell (it)'. The first vowel in a stem may also be deleted in fast speech.
/a/ and /e/ are realized as when unstressed.
High and mid vowels are lowered word-finally.
Vowels are nasalized following a nasal consonant, /Ê”/ or /h/.
Grammar
Máku nouns and verbs inflect for person - either the person of the possessor, on nouns, expressed by a prefix, or of the subject and object, on verbs, which may be prefixes, infixes
An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem (an existing word or the core of a family of words). It contrasts with ''adfix,'' a rare term for an affix attached to the outside of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix.
When marking text for ...
or suffixes, depending on the verb. There are also suffixes which express plurality of a possessor or subject. The language marks clusivity
In linguistics, clusivity is a grammatical distinction between ''inclusive'' and ''exclusive'' first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called ''inclusive " we"'' and ''exclusive "we"''. Inclusive "we" specifically includes the addressee ...
by distinguishing first person singular from first + second person (inclusive), first + third person (exclusive) and first + second + third person ('unified'). Nouns also inflect for number and case via suffixes. Verbs also inflect for tense, aspect
Aspect or Aspects may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art
* Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company
* Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England
* ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
, mood, evidentiality
In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and if so, what kind. An evidential (also verificational or validational) is the particul ...
and negation via suffixes.
Noun phrases exhibit the word order possessor possessor-possessed, or noun-modifier. Demonstratives
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
and numerals typically occur before the nouns they modify. There are postpositions
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
which follow nouns.
Intransitive clause word order is typically subject-verb, and transitive clause word order is most commonly SOV. Indirect objects are typically placed after the verb. Phrases which represent new, focused referents may be fronted to the start of a clause or sentence. Any phrase in focus, both nominal and verbal, can take the focus enclitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...
''=ke''.
Máku has motion-complement serial verb constructions, with subject-verbal complement-motion verb order.
Coordination is accomplished via juxtaposition
Juxtaposition is an act or instance of placing two elements close together or side by side. This is often done in order to compare/contrast the two, to show similarities or differences, etc.
Speech
Juxtaposition in literary terms is the showin ...
, at the phrase and clause levels.
Nouns
Máku nouns decline for number, case and possession. Possession is expressed by a prefix, with certain nonsingular possessors adding a separate suffix. Nonsingular number and case are expressed as suffixes. The Máku noun template is -stem-.--case, as demonstrated by the following examples.
Possession
The following sample paradigms illustrate the possessive morphemes – note the three-way clusivity
In linguistics, clusivity is a grammatical distinction between ''inclusive'' and ''exclusive'' first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called ''inclusive " we"'' and ''exclusive "we"''. Inclusive "we" specifically includes the addressee ...
distinction, differentiating both 1+2 (inclusive) and 1+3 (exclusive) as well as the case where the speaker, listener and other(s) are included (1+2+3), which Rogers (2020) refers to as 'unified'. The alienable and inalienable
''InAlienable'' is a 2007 science fiction film with horror and comic elements, written and executive produced by Walter Koenig, and directed by Robert Dyke. It was the first collaboration of Koenig and Dyke since their 1989 production of ''Moon ...
possessive paradigms only differ in the expression of the morpheme. The 1st person inclusive and 3rd person nonsingular forms are formally identical.
The stem change on 'mouth' in the non-3 possessed forms is one example of an inalienably possessed noun exhibiting a suppletive stem with overt possessive prefixes, of which there are others in Máku.
Note also the following, as an example of an alienably possessed noun with ''-nuʔu'' in the 2 possessed form.
Number
Number is marked by a nonsingular suffix ''-itse'', which does not depend on animacy. This suffix is not realized for semantically plural referents when the noun is treated as a collective group, or if the noun is modified by a numeral or quantifier.
Case
There are nine attested case suffixes in Máku:
Pronouns
Máku pronouns mark person, number and clusivity.
There are at least two demonstrative pronouns ''ki'' 'this' and ''(a)kwa'' 'that' - these can take the locative, lative and inessive cases to form demonstrative adverbs.
Quantifiers
Numerals may take the classifiers ''-sy'' 'period of time' and ''-ʔnte'' 'body part', but these appear to be optional.
The numerals one to four and ''peʔtaka'' 'all' are attested to agree in person with nouns they modify if the person is 1, 1 or 2.
Verbs
Máku verbs inflect for subject and direct object as well as tense, aspect
Aspect or Aspects may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art
* Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company
* Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England
* ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
, mood, evidentiality
In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and if so, what kind. An evidential (also verificational or validational) is the particul ...
and negation. Subject agreement can be marked via prefixes, infixes
An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem (an existing word or the core of a family of words). It contrasts with ''adfix,'' a rare term for an affix attached to the outside of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix.
When marking text for ...
or suffixes, depending on the verb in question, and plural subjects add a suffix. Tense, aspect, mood, evidentiality and negation are expressed through suffixes. Object agreement precedes subject agreement, but is not well known due to lack of data. The relative ordering of the TAME morphemes is also not well known due to lack of documentation, although tense and aspect suffixes are mutually exclusive.
Subject agreement
The ''-pu'' in the 3 subject marker is optional and indicates collectivity of an action.
Tense
There are five tense morphemes in Máku: distant past, recent past, present, near future, and distant future. While the tense boundaries are relative and not absolute, distant past is used just for mythological stories, and generally the distant future refers to events after the current day while the near future refers to events later in the day.
Aspect
Máku has six aspect morphemes.
The permanent aspect suffix ''-na'' is used only with stative verbs and marks permanent and inherent properties.
The temporary aspect suffix ''-sia'' indicates temporary properties when used with stative verbs, and unfinished action with active verbs.
The progressive aspect suffixes are present tense in meaning.
Mood
Verbs marked for the imperative do not have an explicit subject marker. However the hortative does agree with subject.
The conditional mood only occurs in multiclause constructions. However, the purposive can occur both in multiclause and monoclausal sentences, as shown in the below examples.
Evidentiality
The evidentiality suffixes are only used with past tense and are not obligatory.
Negation
Negation is signified by ''-ʔV'', where the value of the vowel is the vowel before the suffix, unless followed by ''-bala'', in which case it is /a/.
Transitive active verbs can optionally take the additional negative suffix ''-bala'' following ''-ʔV''.
''-ʔV'' can also be used as a prohibitive marker, as in
The negative suffix appears to precede the evidential suffixes, which appear to precede the tense suffixes, as in the following:
Vocabulary
Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Máku.
:
References
Bibliography
*
*
*Dixon & Aikhenvald (1999). "Máku", in ''The Amazonian Languages'' (pp. 361–362)
*
*
*
*
*
* Migliazza, Ernesto (1965). "FonologÃa Makú", ''Boletim do MPEG. AntropologÃa'' 25:1–17.
*———— (1966). "Esbôço sintático de um corpus da lÃngua Makú", ''Boletim do MPEG. AntropologÃa'' 32:1–38.
*———— (1978). "Makú, Sapé and Uruak languages. Current status and basic lexicon", ''AL'' 20/3:133–140.
* Rogers, Chris (2020). ''Máku: A Comprehensive Grammar''. Taylor & Francis.
{{South American languages
Language isolates of South America
Indigenous languages of Western Amazonia
Languages of Venezuela
Languages extinct in the 2000s
Macro-Puinavean languages