Phonology
Velar consonants alternate with palatal consonants before /e/ and sometimes before /a/. Examples include ~ "autumn" and ~ "stork". The palatal approximant /j/ is realised as a palatal fricative §before /i/, as in ~ . Syllables in Maká may be of types V, VC, CV, CCV, and CCVC. When a consonant cluster appears at the beginning of a syllable, the second consonant must be /x/, /h/, /w/, or /j/.Morphology
Nouns
Gender
Maká has two genders—masculine and feminine. The demonstratives reflect the gender of a noun (Gerzenstein 1995:153: In the plural the gender distinction is neutralized, and the plural demonstrative is the same as the feminine singular:Number
Maká nouns inflect for plurality. There are several distinct plural endings: -l, -wi, Vts, and -Vy. All plants take the -wi plural, but otherwise the choice seems to be unpredictable (Gerzenstein 1995:150):Case
Maká does not have any overt case marking on nouns. Consider the following sentence, where neither the subject nor object shows any case (Gerzenstein 1995:139):Agreement with the possessor
Nouns agree with their possessor in person (Gerzenstein 1995:148):Verbs
Agreement with subject and object
Verbs agree with their subject and object in a rather complex system. Gerzenstein (1995) identifies five conjugation classes for intransitive verbs. The following two examples show intransitive verbs from conjugation classes 1 and 3. Transitive verbs belong to a different conjugation class, Conjugation 6. The following forms show a transitive verb with a 3rd person object: If the object of the transitive verb is 1st or 2nd person, then certain combinations of subject and object are shown by a portmanteau morpheme. Other combinations involve an object agreement marker which may either precede or follow the subject marker (Gerzenstein 1995:94-101):Applicatives
Verbs in Maká have a series of suffixes called 'postpositions' in Gerzenstein (1995), which have the effect of introducing new oblique objects into the sentence. The following examples show the applicative suffixes -ex 'instrumental ('with')' and -m 'benefactive ('for')'Syntax
Noun phrases
In noun phrases, the possessor precedes the possessed noun (Gerzenstein 1995:155): Noun phrases show the order (Demonstrative) (Numeral) (Adjective) N (Gerzenstein 1995:154):Sentences
Affirmative
The basic word order for a transitive clause in Maká is subject–verb–object, as seen in the following example (Gerzenstein 1995:138) For intransitive clauses, the basic order is verb-subject (Gerzenstein 1995:106):Interrogative
In yes-no questions, the usual subject–verb–object order changes to verb-subject-object following an initial particle /me/ (Gerzenstein 1995:136): Sentences with wh-questions show a sentence-initial question word. Maká has a very small inventory of question words, with only three members: ''łek'' 'who, what', ''pan'' 'which, where, how many', and ''inhats'ek'' 'why'. The following example shows an interrogative sentence with an initial question word (Gerzenstein 1995:178:References
External links