Maku language

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Maku (also Macu, Makú) is an (unclassified) language isolate that is spoken on the Brazil-Venezuela border in Roraima along the Uraricoera River. The speakers' territory was formerly between the Padamo and Cunucunuma rivers.

The Maku language should not be confused with the Puinavean family, which is also known as the Makú (or Maku) family.

There are conflicting reports of the number of speakers which range from 0 to 400. In 1986, there was a report of 2 speakers. Kaufman (1994) reports 10 speakers out of a 100 person ethnic group.

Aryon Rodrigues and Ernesto Migliazza have worked on the language.

Maku is not listed in Gordon's (2005) Ethnologue.

[edit] Genetic relations

Suggested genetic relations involving Maku include

  • with Arawakan
  • with Warao
  • within a Kalianan grouping with Ahuaqué & Kaliana
  • within a Macro-Puinavean grouping with Puinavean, Katukinan, Ahuaqué, & Kaliana
  • within Joseph Greenberg's Macro-Tucanoan

[edit] External links

[edit] Bibliography

  • Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
  • Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (Ed.). (2005). Ethnologue: Languages of the world (15th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. ISBN 1-55671-159-X. (Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com).
  • 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. ISBN 0-292-70414-3.
  • 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.


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Languages