Maipure language
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Maipure (Maypure, Mejepure, Maipure: maipùri jucuàre [maipúɺijukuáɺɛ]) is an extinct language once spoken along the Ventuari, Sipapo, and Autana rivers of Amazonas and, as a lingua franca, in the Upper Orinoco region. It became extinct around the end of the eighteenth century. Raoul Zamponi provided a grammatical sketch of the language and furnished a classified word list, based on all of its extant eighteenth-century material (mainly from the Italian missionary Filippo S. Gilij). It is historically important in that it formed the cornerstone of the recognition of the Maipurean (Arawakan) language family in 1783, along with the Moxo languages.
Classification
Kaufman (1994) gives its closest relatives as Yavitero and other languages of the Orinoco branch of Upper Amazon Arawakan. Aikhenvald places it instead in the Western Nawiki branch.
Phonology
Any assessment about Maipure phonology is tentative due to the poor attestation of the language. A consonant and vowel system are presented below.
Consonants
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | voiceless | p | t | k | |||
| voiced | b | ||||||
| Fricative | s | h | |||||
| Nasal | m | n | |||||
| Lateral flap | ɺ | ||||||
| Trill | r | ||||||
| Glide | w | j |
/r/ is phonetically long, [rː]. /h/ is not attested, but is mentioned by Gilij. /t,s,n/ are classified as dentals due to similar realizations in Baniva and Yavitero.
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | long | plain | long | plain | long | |
| High | i | iː | u | uː | ||
| Mid | e | eː | ||||
| Low | a | aː |
/u/ is realized freely as either [u] or [o]. /e/ is presumably realized as [ɛ], as it is in Baniva and Yavitero. Long vowels are extremely rare.