Xerénte language

The Xerénte or Akwẽ-Xerénte language is an Akuwẽ (Central Jê) language (Jê, Macro-Jê) of Brazil. It is spoken by the Xerente people in the Tocantins state between Rio do Sono and Rio Tocantins.

Xerénte
Akwẽ-Xerénte
Akwẽ
Native to	Brazil
Region	Tocantins
Ethnicity	Xerente people
Native speakers	(1,810 cited 2000)[1]
Language family	Macro-Jê Jê Cerrado Akuwẽ (Central Jê) Xerénte
Official status
Official language in	Brazil (Tocantínia)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xer
Glottolog	xere1240
ELP	Xerente

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i ĩ	ɨ	u ũ
Close-mid	e ẽ		o õ
Mid		ə ə̃
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a

• Vowels /i, ɨ, u, a/ when occurring in unstressed syllables can be heard as [ɪ, ɨ̞, ʊ, ɐ].

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	voiceless	p	t		k
	voiced	b	d
Fricative	voiceless		s			h
	voiced		z
Nasal		m	n
Approximant				j	w
Flap			ɾ

• A [ɡ] sound is heard as an allophone of /k/ when preceding another consonant.
• /d/ can be heard as dental [d̪] when preceding /i/.
• /s/ can be heard as a post-alveolar or retroflex sibilant sound [ʃ~ʂ] when preceding /i/.
• /h/ when preceding /i/ can be heard as a voiced velar or glottal fricative sound [ɣ~ɦ].
• /h/ when preceding /k/ can be heard as a velar fricative sound [x].
• /n/ when preceding the following vowels /i, õ, ɔ/ can be heard as a palatal nasal [ɲ].
• /ɾ/ may also be heard as a retroflex flap [ɽ].^[2]

Grammar

Personal pronouns^[3]

Person	Nominative	Emphatic	Absolutive	Tense-Aspect-Mood-Person markers
1S	wa	wahã	ĩ-	wa-
1P	wanõrĩ (nĩ)	-	wa-
2S	ka, toka	kahã	ai-	bî-, te-
2P	kanõrĩ (kwa), tokanõrĩ	-
3S	ta	tahã	Ø-, ã-, ti-, t-	Ø-, mã-, te-
3P	tanõrĩ	tahãnõrĩ

The nominative and emphatic forms are free morphemes with the function of subject of transitive or intransitive sentences. The absolutive pronoun prefixes mark possessors, objects of postpositions, direct objects, subjects of nominal predicates and subjects of intransitive verbs with post-verbal operators.