Warekena language explained

Warekena
Also Known As:	Baniwa of Maroa Baniwa of Guainía
Nativename:	Guarequena
States:	Brazil, Venezuela
Speakers:	650
Date:	2001–2006
Ref:	e18
Speakers2:	ca. 200 (1999)^[1]
Familycolor:	American
Fam1:	Arawakan
Fam2:	Northern
Fam3:	Upper Amazon
Fam4:	Orinoco
Dia1:	Warekena do rio Xié
Iso3:	gae
Glotto:	guar1293
Glottorefname:	Baniva de Maroa

Warekena (Guarequena), or more precisely Warekena of Xié, is an Arawakan language of Brazil and of Maroa Municipality in Venezuela, spoken near the Guainia River. It is one of several languages which go by the generic name Baré and Baniwa/Baniva – in this case, distinguished as Baniva de Maroa or Baniva de Guainía.

There may be 10 speakers in Brazil and 200 in Venezuela, per Aikhenvald (1999).

Kaufman (1994) classified it in a Warekena group of Western Nawiki Upper Amazonian, Aikhenvald (1999) in Eastern Nawiki.

Personal pronouns in Warekena are formed by adding an emphatic suffix -ya to the cross-referencing personal prefixes.^[2]

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar		Retroflex	Palatal	Velar
				cen.	lat.
Nasal		pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/				pronounced as /link/
	voiced	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/				pronounced as /link/
Fricative	voiceless					pronounced as /link/
	voiced					pronounced as /link/
Rhotic	tap			pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/
	trill			pronounced as /link/
Approximant		pronounced as /link/					pronounced as /link/

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	pronounced as /link/		pronounced as /link/
Mid	pronounced as /link/
Low		pronounced as /link/

pronounced as /link/ can also range to pronounced as /link/.^[3]

Grammar

Unmarked constituent order is AVO, VS_o, S_aV, or S_ioV.

Indirect objects tend to be placed immediately after the predicate.

Notes and References

1. Aikhenvald (1999) The Arawak language family.
2. Book: Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. . 1998 . Warekena . Handbook of Amazonian Languages . Desmond C. . Derbyshire . Geoffrey K. . Pullum . 4 . De Gruyter Mouton . Berlin . 10.1515/9783110822120 . 225–439. Cited in Bhat, D.N.S. 2004. Pronouns. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 25
3. Socorro Sánchez . Marlene . 2005 . Morfología y sintaxis del Baniva . PhD . Maracaibo . Universidad de los Andes.