Бразилиядағы Ксаванте тілі

Macro Jê language spoken in Brazil

The Xavante language is an Akuwẽ (Central Jê) language (Jê, Macro Jê) spoken by the Xavante people in the area surrounding Eastern Mato Grosso, Brazil. The Xavante language is unusual in its phonology, its ergative object–agent–verb word order, and its use of honorary and endearment terms in its morphology. The Xavante people are approximately 18,380 individuals in 170 villages as of 2014, but the language is spoken by 9,600 people, of whom about 7,000 are monolingual. The current speakers, made up of all ages, use the language vigorously and hold positive attitudes towards Xavante.

Xavante is a language in the Jê family, spoken in Mato Grosso, in the west part of Brazil. It has been orthographically rendered as Chavante and Shavante, and is also called Akuen, Akwen, A’uwe Uptabi, A’we, Crisca, Pusciti, and Tapuac.

The Xavante people originate from the east of the Araguaia River, in what was then called the province of Goias. In the early 18th century, this area was heavily invaded by colonizers searching for gold, leading to the indigenous population in the area to suffer from epidemics and live in the residential settlements created by the government. Following this, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, groups of indigenous people, now distinctly self identifying as Xavante, settled in Mato Grosso; this area was relatively undisturbed until the 1930s. At this point, the government under Getulio Vargas initiated the ‘March to the West’ campaign within the National Integration Program, in which expansion to the interior of Brazil and ‘domestication of the Savage’ were heavily promoted. The Xavante people were used in print media as illustrations of newly ‘pacified’ people who had decided to ‘join Brazilian society’. However, conflicts regarding the territories between the Xavante and Brazilian government continue today. This stock is spoken in a wide distribution of non central Brazil; Macro Gê is also popular in the eastern, northern, and central, and southwestern parts of the country, as well as being distributed in nearby Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina, but the Jê family is its only remaining large subgroup, with other languages remaining in isolates due to extinction. Within Jê, its 16 languages are distributed in four divisions; northern, north eastern, central, and southern, and are better preserved than other languages in the stock due to its inland inhabiting speakers. Xavante is classified in the central, alongside Xerente, Xakriaba, and Akroa. The stock is marked by a large presence of nasal vowels, this also being marked in the proto Jê reconstructed language. Consonant inventories of the Macro Ge stock are of medium size, with Xavante historically undergoing a phonological change from velar consonants to glottal stops. All are mildly synthetic, without complex morphology, and have SV constituent orders.

The Xavante people have been studied in ethnographies; in 2010 and 2011, demographic information and ethnographic details were researched for the context of health among the Xavante by Basta, and tuberculosis specifically being examined alongside ethnographic information by DeSouza. Contemporary Xavante research by Lecena and colleagues in 2016 and Da Silva in 1999 has also investigated inactivity and socioeconomic status in the region and general information regarding the ways that Xavante people were living in the late 20th and early 21st century.

The Xavante language was first referenced in the 19th century, in works of comparative philology which used word lists from the language and overviews of its structure. In the 20th century, Xavante has been studied academically since the 1960s by both Brazilian and foreign linguists, starting with a grammar; papers from this period examined the language’s phonemes, syllable structure, as well as aspect and acquisition. By the 1980s, works on the syntax and semantics of Xavante were published, focusing on sentence initial devices and focus; the first Xavante Portuguese dictionary was also produced by Hall, McLeod, and Mitchell, all of whom had researched extensively in Xavante (1987). Since the 1990s, more specific properties of the language have been researched academically, namely with respect to acquisition, name agreement, assimilation, morphology, and respect/intimacy relationships. A revised Xavante Portuguese dictionary, again compiled by Hall, McLeod, and Mitchell, was released in 2004.

The phonology of Xavante is described by McLeod (1974).

With so few phonemic contrasts, Xavante allows wide latitude in allophones of its consonants. P and T: are aspirated as syllable onsets (at the beginning of a word, between vowels, or before /r/), and unreleased as syllable codas (at the end of a word or before a consonant other than /r/). C: freely varies among as an onset, and as a coda (only preceding another , as ). ’: is a glottal stop B: In a C or CC syllable onset before an oral vowel, is pronounced as a plain voiced stop at the beginning of a phonological word, and as either or as a prenasalized voiced stop in the middle of a word. Before nasal vowels, as C or CC, it is pronounced
As a syllable coda, is pronounced before regardless of the following vowel's nasality, and optionally also as before the oral allophones of the other voiced obstruents, and : or It is before D: In a syllable onset before an oral vowel, is pronounced either as a plain voiced stop or as prenasalized voiced stop Unlike , it may be prenasalized at the beginning of a phonological word, not just as a syllable onset. Before a nasal vowel, it is pronounced
As a syllable coda, is pronounced before the oral allophone of a consonant, and as before a nasal consonant. J: In a syllable onset before an oral vowel, is pronounced , in free variation. Before a nasal vowel, it is pronounced
As a syllable coda, is generally pronounced , and is nasalized to or after a nasal vowel. It is also nasalized to before a prenasalized stop allophone. Between oral vowels, the sequence optionally takes an epenthetic : or When is followed by an , a nasalized epenthetic schwa separates them. R: is an alveolar flap, , which is nasalized between nasal vowels. W: is similar to English w, but not rounded before the vowel
H: has no place of articulation, but is a voiceless transition between vowels. Vowels do not become nasalized because of nasalized consonants, so the only consonants that become nasal are those in a cluster preceding a nasal vowel (and coda after a nasal vowel); a preceding oral vowel blocks the nasality from spreading to preceding syllables.