Warekena language
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Warekena (Guarequena), or more precisely Warekena of Xié, is an Arawakan language of Brazil and of Maroa Municipality in Venezuela, spoken near the Guainia River. It is one of several languages which go by the generic name Baré and Baniwa/Baniva – in this case, distinguished as Baniva de Maroa or Baniva de Guainía.
There may be 10 speakers in Brazil and 200 in Venezuela, per Aikhenvald (1999).
Kaufman (1994) classified it in a Warekena group of Western Nawiki Upper Amazonian, Aikhenvald (1999) in Eastern Nawiki.
Personal pronouns in Warekena are formed by adding an emphatic suffix -ya to the cross-referencing personal prefixes.
Phonology
Consonants
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| med. | lat. | |||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ||||||
| Plosive/ Affricate | voiceless | p | t | ts | k | |||
| voiced | b | d | dz | ɡ | ||||
| Fricative | voiceless | ʂ | ||||||
| voiced | ʐ | |||||||
| Rhotic | tap | ɾ | ɺ | |||||
| trill | r | |||||||
| Approximant | w | j |
Vowels
Grammar
Unmarked constituent order is AVO, VSo, SaV, or SioV.
wa-hã
then-PAUS
waʃi
jaguar
yutʃia-hã
kill-PAUS
ema
tapir
wa-hã waʃi yutʃia-hã ema
then-PAUS jaguar kill-PAUS tapir
"Then the jaguar killed the tapir"
ʃupe-hẽ
many-PAUS
ʃiani-pe
child-PL
ʃupe-hẽ ʃiani-pe
many-PAUS child-PL
"Children are many"
peya
one
nu-yaɺitua
1sg-brother
wiyua
die
peya nu-yaɺitua wiyua
one 1sg-brother die
"One of my brothers dies"
nu-yue
1sg-for
mawali
hungry
nu-yue mawali
1sg-for hungry
"I am hungry"
Indirect objects tend to be placed immediately after the predicate.