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Ayoreo is aZamucoan language spoken in bothParaguay andBolivia. It is also known asMorotoco,Moro,Ayoweo,Ayoré, andPyeta Yovai. However, the name "Ayoreo" is more common in Bolivia, and "Morotoco" in Paraguay. It is spoken by theAyoreo people, an indigenous ethnic group traditionally living on a combinedhunter-gatherer and farming lifestyle.

Ayoreo is classified as aZamucoan language, along withChamacoco. Extinct Guarañoca may have been a dialect.

Ayoreo is spoken in bothParaguay andBolivia, with 3,100 speakers total, 1,700 of whom live in Paraguay and 1,400 in Bolivia. Within Paraguay, Ayoreo is spoken in theChaco Department and the northern parts of theAlto Paraguay Department. In Bolivia, it is spoken in theCordillera Province, in theSanta Cruz Department.

Bertinetto (2009) reports that Ayoreo has the 5 vowels/a,e,i,o,u/, which appear both as oral and nasal.^[2]

/j/ can also be heard as[dʒ].^[4]

The prototypical constituent order issubject-verb-object, as seen in the following examples:^[5]

Ayoreo is a fusional language.[6]

Verbs agree with their subjects, but there is no tense-inflection.^{[7][page needed]} Consider the following paradigm, which has prefixes marking person and suffixes marking number:^[8]

When the verb root contains a nasal, there are nasalized variants of the agreement affixes:

Ayoreo is a mood-prominent language.^[6] Nouns can be divided into possessable and non-possessable; possessor agreement is expressed through a prefixation.^{[9][page needed]} The syntax of Ayoreo is characterized by the presence ofpara-hypotactical structures.^{[10][page needed]}

• Bertinetto, Pier Marco (2009)."Ayoreo (Zamuco). A grammatical sketch"(PDF).Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.8.
• Bertinetto, Pier Marco; Ciucci, Luca (2012). "Parataxis, Hypotaxis and Para-Hypotaxis in the Zamucoan Languages".Linguistic Discovery.10 (1):89–111.doi:10.1349/PS1.1537-0852.A.404.hdl:11384/2132.S2CID 14026911.
• Briggs, Janet R. (1972).Quiero contarles unos casos del Beni. Cochabamba: Summer Institute of Linguistics in collaboration with the Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, Dirección Nacional de Antropología.
• Briggs, Janet R. (1973). "Ayoré narrative analysis".International Journal of American Linguistics.39 (3):155–163.doi:10.1086/465259.
• Ciucci, Luca (2007–2008)."Indagini sulla morfologia verbale dell'ayoreo"(PDF).Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica della Scuola Normale (in Italian).7.
• Ciucci, Luca (2010)."La flessione possessiva dell'ayoreo"(PDF).Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (in Italian).9 (2).
• Higham, Alice; Morarie, Maxine; Paul, Greta (2000).Ayoré-English dictionary. Vol. 1–3. Sanford, FL: New Tribes Mission.
• Sušnik, Branislava J. (1963). "La lengua de los Ayoweos - Moros".Boletín de la Sociedad Científica del Paraguay y del Museo Etnográfico. Etnolingüística.8. Asunción:1–148.
• Sušnik, Branislava J. (1973).La lengua de los Ayoweo-Moros. Estructura gramatical y fraseario etnográfico (in Spanish). Asunción: Museo Etnográfico “Andrés Barbero”.

• Ayoreo man recounts first encounter with bulldozer(streamed video). Survival International.Archived from the original on 21 December 2021.
• "Lengua ayoéro" (in Spanish). Promotora Española de Linguistica (PROEL). The page provides colored linguistic maps (habitat, other language families).
• Sorosoro Project
• Lenguas de BoliviaArchived 2019-09-04 at theWayback Machine (online edition)
• ELAR archive of Documentation and Description of Paraguayan Ayoreo, a Language of the Chaco
• Ayoreo (Intercontinental Dictionary Series)

• Languages of Bolivia
• Languages of Paraguay
• Indigenous languages of the South American Chaco
• Zamucoan languages
• Subject–verb–object languages
• Chaco linguistic area

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