Macro-Arawakan is a proposed

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

and the

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean ...

centered on the

Arawakan languages Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient indigenous peoples in South America. Branc ...

. Sometimes, the proposal is called Arawakan, and the central family is called ''Maipurean''.

Proposals

Kaufman (1990) includes the following: *

Arawakan Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient indigenous peoples in South America. Branch ...

(Maipurean) * Arawan *

Guajiboan Guajiboan (also Guahiban, Wahívoan, Guahiboan) is a language family spoken in the Orinoco River region in eastern Colombia and southwestern Venezuela, a savanna region known as the Llanos. Family division Guajiboan consists of 5 languages: * ...

* Candoshi Payne (1991) and Derbyshire (1992) have: *

(Maipurean) * Arawan *

Puquina Puquina (or Pukina) is a small, putative language family, often portrayed as a language isolate, which consists of the extinct Puquina language and Kallawaya, although it is assumed that the latter is just a remnant of the former mixed with Qu ...

* Harakmbet Jolkesky (2016) argues for the following: *

(Maipurean) * Candoshi *

* Munichi According to Jolkesky (op. cit., 611-616), the proto-Macro-Arawakan language would have been spoken in the Middle Ucayali River Basin during the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE, and its speakers would have produced Tutishcainyo pottery in the region. Martins (2005: 342–370) groups the

and

Nadahup languages The Naduhup languages, also known as Makú (Macú) or ''Vaupés–Japurá'', form a small language family in Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela. The name '' Makú'' is pejorative, being derived from an Arawakan word meaning "without speech". ''Nada ...

together as part of a proposed Makúan-Arawakan (Nadahup-Arawakan) family, but this proposal has been rejected by Aikhenvald (2006: 237). Carvalho (2021) notes that the Arawakan and Arawan families have had significant long-term mutual interaction, but does not consider the two language families to be related. According to Carvalho (2021), the Juruá- Purus linguistic corridor had facilitated the migration of Arawakan speakers to the southern fringes of the Amazon basin.

Pronouns

Pronominal system of the Macro-Arawakan languages: :

Lexicon

Several words in the basic lexicon of the Macro-Arawakan languages were pointed out as possible cognates:Jolkesky, Marcelo. (2016). Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas. Brasilia: UnB. PhD Dissertation. :

References

Bibliography

* Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (1999). The Arawak language family. In R. M. W. Dixon & A. Y. Aikhenvald (Eds.), ''The Amazonian languages''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ; . * Campbell, Lyle. (1997). ''American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America''. New York: Oxford University Press. . * Jolkesky, Marcelo. (2016).
Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas
'. Brasilia: UnB. PhD Dissertation
Available here
* 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. * Payne, David. (1991). A classification of Maipuran (Arawakan) languages based on shared lexical retentions. In D. C. Derbyshire & G. K. Pullum (Eds.), ''Handbook of Amazonian languages'' (Vol. 3, pp. 355–499). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. * Derbyshire, Desmond C. (1992). Arawakan languages. In W. Bright (Ed.), ''International encyclopedia of linguistics'' (Vol. 1, pp. 102–105). New Oxford: Oxford University Press. * 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. . * Migliazza, Ernest C.; & Campbell, Lyle. (1988). ''Panorama general de las lenguas indígenas en América'' (pp. 223). Historia general de América (Vol. 10). Caracas: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia. * Byrne, James. (1885). ''General principles of the structure of language'' – Grammatical Sktches: Arawak (pp. 198 ''ff'') * Brinton, D. G., (1871)
''The Arawak Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations''
Philadelphia: McCalla & Stavely. (pp. 18)

External links

Etnolingüística: online resources on native South American languages
{{South American languages Proposed language families