The Xerénte or Akwẽ-Xerénte language is an
Akuwẽ (Central Jê) language (
Jê,
Macro-Jê) of
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 ...
. It is spoken by the
Xerente people in the
Tocantins
Tocantins () is one of the 26 states of Brazil. It is the newest state, formed in 1988 and encompassing what had formerly been the northern two-fifths of the state of Goiás. Tocantins covers and had an estimated population of 1,496,880 in 20 ...
state between
Rio do Sono and
Rio Tocantins.
Phonology
* Vowels /i, ɨ, u, a/ when occurring in unstressed syllables can be heard as
, ɨ̞, ʊ, ɐ
* A
sound is heard as an allophone of /k/ when preceding another consonant.
* /d/ can be heard as dental
̪when preceding /i/.
* /s/ can be heard as a post-alveolar or retroflex sibilant sound
~ʂwhen preceding /i/.
* /h/ when preceding /i/ can be heard as a voiced velar or glottal fricative sound
~ɦ
* /h/ when preceding /k/ can be heard as a velar fricative sound
* /n/ when preceding the following vowels /i, õ, ɔ/ can be heard as a palatal nasal
* /ɾ/ may also be heard as a retroflex flap
Grammar
Personal pronouns
The nominative and emphatic forms are free morphemes with the function of subject of transitive or intransitive sentences. The absolutive pronoun prefixes mark possessors, objects of postpositions, direct objects, subjects of nominal predicates and subjects of intransitive verbs with post-verbal operators.
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Xerente Language
Jê languages
Languages of Brazil