Mẽbêngôkre, sometimes referred to as Kayapó (Mẽbêngôkre: Mẽbêngôkre kabẽn [mẽbeŋoˈkɾɛ kaˈbɛ̃n]) is a Northern Jê language (Jê, Macro-Jê) spoken by the Kayapó and the Xikrin people in the north of Mato Grosso and Pará in Brazil.^[2] There are around 8,600 native speakers since 2010 based on the 2015 Ethnologue 18th edition. Due to the number of speakers and the influence of Portuguese speakers, the language stands at a sixth level of endangerment; in which the materials for literacy and education in Mẽbêngôkre are very limited.

Ethnography

The Mẽbêngôkre language is currently spoken by two ethnic groups, the Kayapó and the Xikrin, which, besides sharing a language in common, both use the endonym Mẽbêngôkre (literally “those from the hole of the water”^[3] "Although there are differences between the dialects spoken among the various ethnic groups, all recognize themselves as participants in a common culture."^[4]) to refer to themselves and to their language.^[5]: 53 They are also sometimes regarded as major subdivisions of a single ethnic group, the Mẽbêngôkre.

The label Kayapó (also spelled Caiapó or Kayapô) has at times been used synonymously with Mẽbêngôkre in the literature — that is, it has been taken to refer both to the Kayapó (stricto sensu) and to the Xikrin, as well as to the linguistic varieties spoken by these groups. In order to avoid ambiguity (and further confusion with the Southern Kayapó, yet another ethnic group which spoke a not very closely related language of the Jê family), the term Mẽbêngôkre is preferred in this article (unless a reference is made to the Kayapó as opposed to the Xikrin). The term Kayapó, whose original reference was restricted to the aforementioned Southern Kayapó, is an exonym of unknown origin. It has been sometimes etymologized as a Tupi-Guarani word meaning “those who look like monkeys”,^[6] but this has been disputed.^{[5]: 91, fn. 41}

The first historical records of the Mẽbêngôkre language and culture made by Westerners date back to the end of the 19th century, when the French explorer Henri Coudreau came in contact with the Mẽbêngôkre-speaking Irã'ãmrãnhre group. Some records were made by the missionaries who arrived to Brazil later in the century to Christianize the indigenous people. Known authors of that period include Father Sebastião and Reverend Horace Banner, who lived among another Mẽbêngôkre (Kayapó) group known as Gorotire between 1937 and 1951.^[3] Although, “the Mebengokre [have been in] permanent contact with the surrounding non-indigenous population at various times, in most cases [there have been] catastrophic consequences.^[2] The Irã'ãmrãnhre are now extinct, and the population of the Gorotire group decreased by 80% during the first years of contact. Following such brutal experiences, some small groups refused to be approached by investigators and remain uncontacted around the Xingu and Curuá rivers.

Since the exploration period, academic linguists and anthropologists have investigated the Mẽbêngôkre and have successfully acquired a body of knowledge about this indigenous group. Since the early writings on the grammar of Mẽbêngôkre by the Summer Institute of Linguistics missionaries Stout and Thomson (1974), multiple academic researchers have worked on the language, including Marília Ferreira,^[7] Maria Amélia Reis Silva, Andrés Pablo Salanova, Lucivaldo Silva da Costa, and Edson de Freitas Gomes. A translation of the New Testament into Mẽbêngôkre was published in 1996, and there are literary works including myth and ritual stories and descriptions of the Mẽbêngôkre speaking communities.

Furthermore, the Brazilian organization ProDocult began a documentation project of the Kayapó language and culture in April 2009 and thus far have produced "150 hours of video recording, 15 hours of audio recording and more than 6,000 digital photos, in addition to ... films [containing] records of "culture" Mebengokre, and how could it be ... highly dynamic [in its] creative aspect."^[8]

Phonology

The phonological inventory of Mẽbêngôkre is composed of 16 consonants and 17 vowels,^[9] including oral and nasal vowels. Mẽbêngokre has a series of voiced oral stops, which makes it unique among the Northern Jê languages in employing the feature [voice] for establishing phonological oppositions. All other Northern Jê languages lost Proto-Northern Jê voiced obstruents through devoicing.^[10]: 85

Consonants

The consonant /d/ (as in jaduj 'short', krwỳdy 'beak') is exceedingly rare; /t͡ʃ/ (as in xãn 'cat', jaxwe 'naughtly') is rare in the onset position. The consonant /ɾ/ in the coda position is always followed by an epenthetic echo vowel, which may be an exact copy of the preceding vowel or [i] (if the preceding vowel is /a/ or sometimes /ɔ ʌ/). That way, the words /paɾ/ 'his/her foot' and /puɾ/ 'garden' are pronounced [ˈpaɾi], [ˈpuɾu] (and written pari, puru).

Vowels

The vowels /ã/ (as in mrã 'to walk', xãn 'cat') and /ũ/ (as in tũm 'old') are rare and mostly go back to earlier oral vowels /a/ and /u/ in certain environments. The vowel /ɯ̃/ (as in nhỹ 'to sit') is also somewhat rare.

In some analyses, Mẽbêngôkre has five diphthongs which occur word-finally only: uwa /uᵊ/, ija /iᵊ/, eje /ɛᵊ/, ôwa /oᵊ/, ĩja /ĩᵊ/. These are realized phonetically as [ˈuwa], [ˈija], [ˈɛjɛ], [ˈowa], [ˈĩj̃ã].^[5]: 69 Other authors analyze them as monophthongs followed by a glide (/w/ or /j/) in the coda position, which is followed by an epenthetic echo vowel. Some examples follow.

Syllable structure

The maximal syllable structure of Mẽbêngôkre is /CCCVC/. Any consonant may occur as a simple onset. Complex onsets may by formed by a combination of one of /p b m k ŋ/ and one of /ɾ j/ (pr-, br-, mr-, kr-, ngr-, pj-, mj-, bj-, kj-, ngj-); /t n ɾ t͡ʃ d͡ʒ ɲ k ŋ kɾ ŋɾ/ can also combine with /w/ (tw-, nw-, rw-, xw-, djw-, nhw-, kw-, ngw-, krw-, ngrw-). The coda may be any of /p t t͡ʃ k m n ɲ ɾ j/ (in analyses which do not recognize the existence of diphthongs, also /w/).

Stress

In Mẽbêngôkre, the stress is fixed on the final underlying syllable. Epenthetic vowels (echo vowels) are absent from the phonological representation and are thus unstressed (as in pari /paɾ/ [ˈpaɾi] 'his/her foot'). In diphthongs, the leftmost element is stressed (as in ngija /ŋiᵊ/ [ˈŋija] 'skunk'). The diminutive clitic -re is unstressed, as in ngôre [ˈŋoɾɛ] 'his/her louse'.

Morphology

Finiteness morphology

As in all other Northern Jê languages, Mẽbêngôkre verbs inflect for finiteness and thus have a basic opposition between a finite form and a nonfinite form. Finite forms are used in matrix clauses only, whereas nonfinite forms are used in all types of subordinate clauses as well as in some matrix clauses (with a particular aspectual interpretation). The morphology associated with the finite/nonfinite distinction includes suffixation and/or prefix substitution.^[9] Some verbs lack an overt finiteness distinction.

The following nonfinite suffixes occur in the language: -rV (the most common option, found in many transitive and intransitive verbs) and its allomorph -n (following front nasal vowels), -nh (found chiefly in transitive verbs), as well as -k, -m, and -x (found in a handful of intransitive verbs).

In a handful of verbs, all of which end in an underlying stop, the nonfinite form does not receive any overt suffixes, but it is nevertheless distinct from the finite form because the latter lenites the stem-final consonant (-t, -k → -rV, -rV).^[11]: 544

Erstwhile palatalizing prefix

A small set of verbs form their nonfinite forms by employing one of the aforementioned processes and a morphophonological process whereby the onset of the stressed syllable changes to dj, ’, or is deleted, whereas the nucleus of the stressed syllable is raised (if possible). This has been attributed to the influence of an underlying palatalizing nonfinite prefix in Proto-Northern Jê.^[11]

Prefix substitution or loss

In addition to the aforementioned processes, the finiteness inflection may involve prefix substitution or loss. For example, the valency-reducing prefixes are a(j)- (anticausative) and a- (antipassive) in finite verb forms, but bi- and djà-/dju-, respectively, in the nonfinite forms.^{[9]: 54–5} In addition, some verbs which denote physiological activities or movement have a prefix (i- and wa-, respectively) in their finite forms but not in the nonfinite form.

Person inflection and case

In Mẽbêngôkre, postpositions, and relational nouns inflect for person of their internal argument by taking absolutive or accusative person prefixes. The accusative series is required by a subclass of transitive verbs (in finite clauses only) as well as by some postpositions; the absolutive series is the default one and is found with most transitive and all intransitive verbs in finite clauses, with all verbs in nonfinite clauses, with all relational nouns, and with some postpositions. External arguments of verbs are not indexed by person prefixes but are rather encoded by nominative (unmarked) noun phrases (including personal pronouns) in finite clauses, or by ergative phrases in nonfinite clauses. In nouns, nominative, absolutive and accusative are unmarked, whereas the ergative case is marked by the ergative postposition te.

The person prefixes which index the internal argument of verbs, postpositions, and nouns are as follows.^[12]: 41

The nominative and ergative forms of the pronouns are as follows.^{[12]: 40–1}

The pronouns have also an emphatic form, which is used when a pronoun is focalized and can also be considered a grammatical case on its own.

Nominative case

The nominative case expresses the subject of a transitive or intransitive verb.

Ergative case

The ergative case marks the agent of a transitive verb in a nonfinite form and may cooccur with a nominative pronoun expressing the same participant.

Absolutive case

In nonfinite clauses, the absolutive case encodes the sole participant (subject) in intransitive verbs and the patient in transitive verbs.

It is also used to encode the patient of some transitive verbs in their finite form (except for monosyllabic verbs compatible with overt nonfiniteness morphology, which take accusative objects), as well as the possessors of nouns and the complements of some postpositions.

Accusative case

The accusative case encodes the patient of monosyllabic transitive verbs compatible with overt nonfiniteness morphology in finite clauses.

Voice

In Mẽbêngôkre, transitive verbs may be detransitivized by means of an anticausative or an antipassive derivation. The anticausative marker is the prefix a(j)- in the finite form and the prefix bi- in the nonfinite form of the verb. The antipassive derivation is achieved by means of the prefix a- in the finite form and the prefix djà- or dju- in the nonfinite form of the verb.^[13]

Derivational morphology

Diminutive and augmentative

Mẽbêngôkre makes use of a diminutive suffix -re (which is always unstressed; after -t it has the allomorph -e, and after nasals it surfaces as -ne) and of an augmentative suffix -ti (which is always stressed). These attach to nouns and abundantly occur in the names of animal and plant species. The combination of -ti and -re is used in a number of nouns which denote human collectives, such as Gorotire and Mẽtyktire (names of Mẽbêngôkre subdivisions).

Non-productive affixes

In Mẽbêngôkre, many predicates appear to contain fossilized prefixes of different shapes (such as ka-, nhõ-, ku-, py-/pu-, ja-, dju-, nhĩ-), whose semantic contribution is not always straightforward. These have been variously referred to as classifiers^[14]: 100 or transitivity prefixes.^{[11]: 539–40}

Reduplication

Reduplication may be used to convey repeated action and possibly transitivity, as in the following examples:^[13]

In some verbs, such as prõrprõt ‘to float up and down’, the final consonant of the reduplicated base changes from a stop /t/ to a rhotic /ɾ/.

Syntax

Mẽbêngôkre is a head-final language.

Morphosyntactic alignment

Prototypically, finite matrix clauses in Mẽbêngôkre have a nominative–accusative alignment pattern, whereby the agents of transitive verbs (A) and the sole arguments of intransitive verbs (S) receive the nominative case, whereas the patients of transitive verbs (P) receive the absolutive or the accusative case, which has been described as an instance of a split-P alignment.^[10]: 272 There are only several dozen of transitive verbs which take an accusative patient, all of which are monosyllabic^{[14]: 30–2} and have distinct finite and nonfinite forms. It has been suggested that all transitive verbs which satisfy both conditions (monosyllabicity and a formal finiteness distinction), and only them, select for accusative patients,^[11]: 538 while all remaining transitive verbs take absolutive patients in Mẽbêngôkre and other Northern Jê languages.

Nonfinite clauses (including all embedded clauses) are headed by nonfinite verbs and are ergatively organized: the agents of transitive verbs (A) are encoded by ergative postpositional phrases, whereas the patients of transitive verbs (P) and the sole arguments of all intransitive predicates (S) receive the absolutive case.^[14][15]

Classes of predicates

The following table summarizes the proposed classes of predicates in Mẽbêngôkre.^[15]

Transitive verbs

In Mẽbêngôkre, transitive verbs take accusative or absolutive patients in finite clauses, depending on the verb class. In nonfinite clauses, all transitive verbs take absolutive patients. Note that nouns do not receive any overt marking either in the accusative or in the absolutive case; the difference between these two cases is seen in the third person index, which takes the form ku- in the accusative case and ∅- in the absolutive case.

The transitive verbs which index their patient in the accusative case (in finite clauses) are known as ku-verbs. All ku-verbs are monosyllabic and have distinct finite and nonfinite forms. The remaining transitive verbs index their patient in the absolutive case. All verbs that belong to this class satisfy at least one of the following conditions:

• they contain at least two syllables (for example, pumũ ‘to see’, kaô ‘to suck’, ku’õ ‘to wash (solid objects)’),
• their finite and nonfinite forms are identical (for example, ’ôk ‘to paint’, kre ‘to plant’, djũn ‘to insult’).

Finite ku- verbs further differ from all other transitive verbs in that under certain circumstances they index their agent (rather than patient) on the verb. This happens when a second-person agent acts over a third-person patient:^{[12]: 55–6}

Intransitive verbs

Semantics

Instruments, locations, and prototypical agents

Mẽbêngôkre extensively uses the nouns djà ‘container’ and djwỳnh ‘owner, master’ to denote instruments (or locations) and prototypical agents, respectively, as in idjàkuru djà ‘eating utensils; eating place; food’ (literally ‘the container of my eating’) or pi’ôk jarẽnh djwỳnh ‘teacher’ (literally ‘the owner of the telling of the book’). These nouns attach to the nonfinite (nominal) forms of verbs or to other nouns, and express meanings that in other languages are frequently conveyed by special kinds of nominalizations.^[14]: 88

Tense and aspect

In Mẽbêngôkre, there is no morphological distinction between present and past, the completion or continuation of an action is determined by the narrative context. Aspectual distinctions may be conveyed by auxiliaries or by using a nonfinite form of a verb in an unembedded clause. The following sentence shows the role of verbal finiteness when determining aspect:^{[14]: 89–90}

In the semantic interpretation of the first example, the position of the event with respect to the time of the utterance can only be determined by narrative context. In contrast, the occurrence of the nonfinite form of the verb in the second example makes the event not "anaphoric to discourse, but rather coterminous with the subject's lifespan (mutatis mutandis for inanimate subjects). This interpretation has been variously described as “stative” or “subject-oriented” (in the sense that it ascribes a property to the subject, rather than focusing on the event itself) in the descriptive literature.”^[16]

Vocabulary

Kinship terms

Mẽbêngôkre has triadic kinship terms, which express at the same time the relation of a given referent both to the speaker and the addressee.^[17]

Loanwords

Mẽbêngôkre has been in contact with the distantly related Karajá language, as evidence by a number of Karajá loanwords in Mẽbêngôkre, especially in the dialect spoken by the Xikrin group; the source of these loanwords is thought to be the Xambioá dialect. There are also loans from the Tupian languages Yudjá (Jurunan group) and Língua Geral Amazônica (Tupi-Guarani group), as well as from a hypothetical extinct Northern Jê language. More recently, lexical borrowings have been adopted from Brazilian Portuguese. Examples include:^{[18]: 13 [5]}