Maxakalí is a Maxakalían language spoken in fourteen villages in Minas Gerais

Minas Gerais

Minas Gerais is one of the 26 states of Brazil, of which it is the second most populous, the third richest, and the fourth largest in area. Minas Gerais is the Brazilian state with the largest number of Presidents of Brazil, the current one, Dilma Rousseff, being one of them. The capital is the...

, Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

, by fewer than a thousand people.

Vowels

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...	Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
High	i, ĩ	ɯ, ɯ̃
Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel...	ɛ, ɛ̃		o, õ
Low		a, ã

Consonants

	Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...	p	t		k	ʔ
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	m ~ b	n ~ d		ɡ ~ ŋ
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...		ʃ	j ~ ʒ		h

Word order

The most common word order in Maxakalí is SOV.

	Kakxop	te	xokhep	xo’op
	child	SUB	milk	drink

"The child drinks milk"

Morphosyntactic alignment

Maxakalí is an ergative language. The ergative case

Ergative case

The ergative case is the grammatical case that identifies the subject of a transitive verb in ergative-absolutive languages.-Characteristics:...

 covers transitive subjects as well as indirect objects. The absolutive case

Absolutive case

The absolutive case is the unmarked grammatical case of a core argument of a verb which is used as the citation form of a noun.-In ergative languages:...

 covers intransitive subjects and transitive objects.

Person Grammatical person Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...	Ergative Ergative case The ergative case is the grammatical case that identifies the subject of a transitive verb in ergative-absolutive languages.-Characteristics:...	Absolutive Absolutive case The absolutive case is the unmarked grammatical case of a core argument of a verb which is used as the citation form of a noun.-In ergative languages:...
1st sing	ã	ũg
2nd sing	xa	ã
3rd sing	tu	ũ
1st plur incl	yũmũ’ã	yũmũg
1st plur excl	ũgmũ’ã	ũgmũg

	ũgmũg	mõg	nãpet	ha	nũy	xa	hãpxop	ũm	pop
	1pl:excl:ABS	go	market	to	in-order-to	2sg:ERG	food	some	buy

"We (excluding you) are going to the market to buy you (indirect object) some food."

Suppletive verb number

For some verbs, number is shown not by conjugation, but by suppletive

Suppletion

In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irregular" or even "highly irregular". The term "suppletion" implies...

verb stems. These verb stems can show number differences either for the subject or for the object.

Subject number

	tik	yũm
	man	sit (singular)

"The man sits/sat."

	tik	mãm
	man	sit (plural)

"The men sit/sat."

Object number

	tik	te	koktix	putex
	man	SUB	monkey	kill (singular)

"The man killed a monkey."

	tik	te	koktix	kix
	man	SUB	monkey	kill (plural)

"The man killed the monkeys."

Noun compounding

Maxakalí nouns readily form compounds, here are some examples:

	yĩy	kox	xax
	speak	hole	cover

"lips"

	ãmot	xuxpex
	sand	tasty

"salt"

	yĩm	kutok
	hand	child

"finger"

External links

• Ethnologue: Maxakalí
• Proel: Lengua Mashakalí
• Maxakalí-English grammar and dictionary
• Information on Maxakalí at Etnolinguistica.Org's Catalogue of South American Languages