| Mawayana | |
| Also Known As: | Mapidian |
| States: | Brazil, Guyana and Suriname |
| Speakers: | 2 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| Familycolor: | American |
| Fam1: | Arawakan |
| Fam2: | North Arawak |
| Fam3: | Rio Branco (Wapishanan)[1] |
| Dia1: | Mawakwa? |
| Lc1: | mzx |
| Ld1: | Mawayana |
| Lc2: | mpw |
| Ld2: | Mapidian (duplicate code)[2] |
| Glotto: | mapi1252 |
| Glottoname: | Mapidian-Mawayana |
| Glotto2: | mawa1268 |
| Glottoname2: | Mawakwa |
Mawayana (Mahuayana), also known as Mapidian (Maopidyán), is a moribund Arawakan language of northern South America. It used to be spoken by people living in ethnic Wai-wai and Tiriyó villages in Brazil, Guyana and Suriname. As of 2015, the last two speakers of the language are living in Kwamalasamutu.
lists Mawayana (and possibly Mawakwa as a dialect) together with Wapishana under a Rio Branco (North-Arawak) branch of the Arawakan family. notes that Mawayana "is closely related to Wapishana" and according to they share at least 47% of their lexicon.
Mawayana has, among its consonants, two implosives, pronounced as //ɓ// and pronounced as //ɗ//, and what has been described as a "retroflex fricativised rhotic", represented with (rž), that it shares with Wapishana. The vowel systems contains four vowels (pronounced as //i-e, a, ɨ, u-o//), each of which has a nasalised counterpart.
| Plosive | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||||
| Rhotic | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
| Glide | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
Mawayana vowel phonemes:
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/~pronounced as /link/ | |
| Close-mid | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Open | pronounced as /link/ |
Vowels have both nasal and length contrast.
| 1 | n-/m- -na | wa- -wi | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | ɨ-/i- -i | ɨ- -wiko | |
| 3 | ɾ(ɨ/iʔ)- -sɨ | na- -nu | |
| 3 refl. | a- |
| -ta, -ɗa, -ɓa | ||
| present | -e | |
| reciprocal | -(a)ka | |
| adjectival | -ɾe, -ke |
Mawayana has a polysynthetic morphology, mainly head-marking and with suffixes, although there are pronominal prefixes. The verbal arguments are indexed on the verb through subject suffixes on intransitive verbs, while agent prefixes and object suffixes on transitive verbs.