Maipure (, ) is an extinct Arawakan (Maipurean) language formerly spoken in the Venezuelan state of Amazonas. The language began declining, and eventually went extinct, around the late 18th century. The Italian missionary and linguist Filippo S. Gilij documented the only significant information on Maipure. In addition, Gilij used Maipure as the cornerstone of the recognition of the Maipurean (Arawakan) language family.

History

The Maipure language is thought to have possibly been used by other peoples of the region as a lingua franca, a common medium of communication among ethnic groups speaking different languages. By 1767, most of the Maipure had been missionized in two reducciones, or villages, along the middle Orinoco, being Caida de los Atures and Encaramada, along with various other peoples, including the Avane, Yavitero and Tamanaku. The multilingual situation the Maipure were placed in, along with the destruction of their culture, led to the rapid decline of their language, and it was "completely replaced with Spanish within a few generations" in the missions. The groups of Maipure who had not been missionized also lost their language, speculated by linguist Raoul Zamponi to have been due to "a lack of social cohesion".

Language contact

Maipure exhibits a number of Cariban loanwords. These include , (cf. , ), , (cf. , ), , (cf. , ), and (cf. , ). A possible Saliban loanword is also present in 'maize' (cf. , ).

Geographical distribution

Maipure was spoken along the Ventuari, Sipapo, and Autana rivers in the Upper Orinoco region. A 1767 report by Lorenzo Hervás indicates the Maipure who had not been missionized were distributed along the Upper Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and the Marañón rivers.

Classification

In 1783, Gilij was the first to identify similarities between Maipure and a number of languages now classified as Arawakan, including Avane, which is so closely related to Maipure that it may be a dialect of it, Cabre, Guipunave, and Yavitero, in his book Saggio di storia americana (1780). His classification spawned the name "Maipurean" to designate the grouping, also known under the name "Arawakan" (after the Lokono language, also called Arawak), which currently comprises around 65 languages. According to Alexandra Aikhenvald (1999), Gilij compared Maipure with the Moxo languages to establish a connection between the two.

Linguist Terrence Kaufman (1994) gives the closest relatives of Maipure within the Arawakan languages as Yavitero and other languages of the Orinoco branch of Upper Amazon Arawakan. Aikhenvald (1999) places it instead with the Resígaro, Yucuna, Achagua, Piapoco, and Cabiyari languages in the Colombian branch of the North Amazonian languages. According to Zamponi (2003), its closest relatives are Avane, Baniwa, and Yavitero.

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

is mentioned by Gilij, but is not attested in the available data. is phonetically long, . are classified as dental consonants due to similar realizations of these phonemes in Baniva and Yavitero.

Vowels

is realized as either or . The allophone occurs after unstressed or , and the allophone word-initially, except in the loanword and ethnonym . is presumably realized as , as it is in Baniva and Yavitero. Long vowels are extremely rare, and only one minimal pair, pairs of words differing in only one phoneme, being and , is attested.

Morphosyntax

Noun phrases

Noun phrases (NPs) are headed by pronouns or nouns. The head may be accompanied by one or more of "adjectives, relative clauses, quantifiers, the limiter , numerals, demonstrative determiners, and possessor noun phrases".

Pronouns

Three classes of pronouns are present in Maipure, being personal, demonstrative, and interrogative.

Personal

Maipure uses three sets of personal pronouns, labeled as set I, II, and III. Set I pronouns consist of a cross-referencing prefix followed by or , and occur as "topicalized subjects of intransitive, active verbs". Set II pronouns are made up of or , apparently followed by a pronoun from set III, and may occur as either subjects of intransitive, stative verbs part of declarative clauses, non-verbal predicates part of declarative clauses, or as objects without the irrealis mood marker and the relativizing clitic , or in neutral yes/no questions. Lastly, set III pronouns occur as subjects of non-verbal predicates in wh-questions, and as objects with and , or in neutral yes/no questions.

Demonstratives

Maipure demonstrative pronouns are very poorly attested. They are "distingusied by proximity of the referent to the speaker, number, and gender in the singular". An example is .

Interrogatives

The only attested interrogative pronoun in Maipure is .

Cross-referencing

In Maipure, there is a set of prefixes used to cross-reference the subject in active verbs.

Nouns

Nouns in Maipure have the grammatical categories of possession, number, gender, noun class, tense, and degree.

Possession

Like in other closely related languages, Maipure has three noun classes, being inalienably possessed, alienably possessed and unpossessable nouns.

Inalienable nouns commonly use a suffix to indicate their possessed forms, and do not have a prefix for their unpossessed forms, although kinship terms must have a possessor, and a few nouns also have a suppletive form for their non-possessed form (e.g. unpossessed and possessed ). They consist of nouns for body parts, plant parts, kinship terms, and nouns commonly associated with people.

Alienably possessed nouns, in contrast, mark their possession using a cross-referencing prefix and either a possessing suffix, either or , or a vowel alternation of # > # (where # indicates a word boundary and V a wildcard symbol) stem-finally. Unpossessed forms go unmarked always.

Unpossessable nouns include words for "harmful animals, natural phenomena, astronomical bodies, and personal names".

Number

Maipure nouns have two numbers, singular and plural. The singular number is always unmarked, and marking for plural nouns is optional. The pluralizing suffix may be , , , and .

Gender

Maipure distinguishes two genders, feminine and non-feminine. Gender is only visible in the agreement of nouns with pronouns and third-person singular prefixes. It is also thought to have been distinguished in singular demonstrative determiners. Gender is not distinguished in plural forms. For human nouns, "if not animate [nouns] in general", the gender of the noun is dependent on its sex, while inanimate nouns are non-feminine by default. Functionally, the non-feminine gender is unmarked.

Class

Maipure also utilizes numeral and locative classifiers. "Numeral classifiers are used with numerals from one to three", and locative classifiers in locative adpositional phrases. No noun classifiers proper occur in Maipure, but some fossilized suffixes such as can be found in forms like and .

Tense

Maipure expresses past tense with the morpheme , which takes a suffix expressing gender in the singular. It is unmarked in the plural.

Degree

The diminuitive suffix is used to express small size in its two attestations, , and .

Sample text

Below is the Lord's Prayer translated into Maipure.

Notes

References