Matis language

Matís is an indigenous language of the Brazilian Amazon basin which belongs to the Panoan language family.

History

The Matis were completely unknown and undocumented until 1974. Their first documented contact with non-indigenous peoples came two years later in 1976. They were contacted by the Fundação Nacional do Índio, which installed a post near a river bank where the Matis could pick up food and tools. This post eventually lead to further contact; however, by 1983 the Matis population had been fallen to 87, meaning that 35% of their population was lost due to this contact. Thankfully, the Matis people recovered, and cultural practices and rituals were resumed.

Language Documentation

Rogério Ferreira and his wife Vitória Ferreira have a series of books which represent the only official documentation project concerning the documentation and study of the Matis language. According to Vitória Ferreira, this neglect of Pano languages is due to an overemphasis on the larger language families (Tupi, Jê, Aruak and Karib). This particular language project, a joint dissertation project by Rogério Ferreira and Vitória Ferreira was funded by FAPESP, a São Paulo research foundation.

Matis Language

Matis is spoken by the Matìs in Amazonas, a Brazilian state. There is currently an estimated 350 Matis speakers(PIB). Matis is not considered an endangered language due to the large amount of young people speaking the language. There is a high level of transmission, as it is generally only at the end of the teen years that Matis youth learn Portuguese. This is only taught to those who intend on interacting with the outside world with the intention of benefitting the Matis community. This includes males who adventure to urban areas to purchase goods to bring back.

Language Family

The Matis language belongs to the Pano family. It's one of the twenty-eight languages of which the Pano family is composed of. The Pano language family is one of the four main language families in Brazil, along with Aruak, Karib and Tukanu (Rogério p.27). Recently, research on the Matis language has gathered steam, largely thanks to the work of Vitória Ferreira and her husband Rogério. Vitória published a book on Matis phonology while Rogério published a book studying morphology. Rogério’s book goes into extreme linguistic detail about grammatical rules as well as offering a brief background description about the indigenous community. Vitória’s research focused more on pronunciation and word sequences.

Morphology

Present a 1-paragraph summary of the aspects that are listed under “morphology” in the grammar that you are investigating (use the table of contents).

1. The book titled Língua Matis (Pano): Aspetos Descritivos da Morfossintaxe dedicates its analysis to the grammatical aspects of the Matis language. After a brief phonological table, Rogério Spanghero Ferreira explains the grammatical classes of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and pronouns. His wife’s book Língua Matis Pano : Uma Análise Fonológica, shifts focus to phonological processes and syllable structures.

Morphological Aspects

a.) Nouns in the Matis language constitute an open class and are characterized by these morphological principles – case, gender, number- There are three cases for nouns- ergative, absolute and comitative

b.) Verbs in the Matis Language fall under two tenses: time which has not yet passed and time that has passed. This second category can be broken up into subcategories which detail how much time has passed.- To distinguish how much time has passed the Matis language uses words such as nebi (now), uxtokin (yesterday) and inden (long time ago/ back in the day).

Pronouns

In the Matis language there are personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, reflexive pronouns, possessive pronouns and interrogative pronouns.

Examples:

Personal Pronoun: mi means you

Demonstrative Pronoun: nekit- means that

Reflexive Pronoun: Reflexive pronoun is formed with the use of the suffix (–ben).mi+ben means yourself

Possessive Pronoun: nuki- means ours

Interrogative Pronoun: awɨ- means what.

Case and Agreement

Matis is an ergative-absolutive language.

The subject of intransitive and transitive verbs are marked in the same way. The agent is what stays fixed depending on the sentence structure.

Examples:

uʃtokin tumi -n unkin -Ø tonk -a

yesterday tumi killed the pig

“Yesterday, Tumi killed the pig”

papi -Ø uʃ -e -k dukek

man -abs sleeps -n.pass. –declar, deit

“The man sleeps (hanging)”

abad -e -k bina -Ø

runs -n.pass. –declar. Bina -abs

“Bina runs”

Verb Tense

Verbs in the Matis language are broken down into two tenses: time not yet passed, and past. The past tense is broken down into three categories: time immediately passed, time recently passed, and distant time passed.

Past tense: suffixes –a, -bo and –bo are used in the verb and are tied to the time in which the action occurred. Speakers use temporal words: nebi (now), uxtokin (yesterday), inden (longtime ago, back in the day) to reference the time of the action.

a.) time immediately passed is marked by the suffix –a

ɨ -n -bi I Ø tʃe -a -k

I -erg -sg eel -abs ate -past.im -declar.

“I ate eel”

b.) time recently passed is marked by the suffix -bo

nu -ki -Ø tʃo -b

I -pl -abs come -past.recent

“We arrived (today)”

c.) distant time passed

kidipi -n mates -Ø tanawa -bonda -ʃ

Fillipe -erg. matis -abs. know -past. distant -3

“Fillipe knew how to speak Matis”

d.) Time not yet passed. This includes present and future tenses. There is no specific suffix for this tense, however it is marked by the morpheme –e.

rogeriu -n datonkete -Ø ʃik -e -k

Rogério -erg shirt -abs. clean -n.past. –declar.

“Rogério cleans clothes”

setkeʃ madiwin -Ø tʃ0 -I -k

tomorrow mariwin -abs. come -n.past. –declar.

“Tomorrow, Mariwin comes”

References

Rogério Spanghero Ferreira. Língua Matis (Pano): Aspectos Descritivos daMorfossintaxe. Lincom Europa, 2001. Munich