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Yawalapiti (Jaulapiti) is anArawakan language ofBrazil. The Agavotaguerra (Agavotoqueng) reportedly spoke the same language.^[3] Speakers of the language live in a village along the edge of the river Tuatuari, a tributary of theKuluene River, located in the southern part of theXingu Indigenous Park (Upper Xingu), in the state ofMato Grosso.^[4]

Yawalapiti andWaurá, an Arawakan language belonging to the same subgroup, share a very similar phonemic inventory. The main segments are classified in the following table.

There are no voiced plosives or affricates in the language. The palatal[c] appears to be anallophone of/k/ occurring before thefront vowel/i/, e.g. [puˈluka] "countryside" vs. [naˈciɾu] "my aunt". Also, the fricative/ʂ/ is in free variation with its voiced counterpart and/ʐ/ respectively, e.g. [iˈʂa ~ iˈʐa] "canoe".^[6]

There are also some phonotactic constraints that dictate what types of consonants are allowed to appear in certain positions inside a word. For instance, the sounds/tʃ,l,ɾ/ cannot occur before the vowel/ɨ/, and the latter two are restricted to the medial position. In a similar manner, the liquid/ʎ/ is only observed in medial position and never before/a/. As for the voiceless/r̥/, it is the onlyrhotic segment that is allowed to appear in any position and before any vowel. Thesemivowel/w/ is found in initial, medial and final position, while/j/ does not occur in final position.^[7]

Theglottal stop is automatic in words beginning or ending in a vowel, i.e. a word like/u/ "water" is pronounced as[ˈʔuʔ].^[8]

The Yawalapiti language has both oral and nasal vowels, as shown below.

Although nasal vowels mostly occur before or after nasal consonants, e.g.[ˈĩmi] "pequi oil" or[ˈmũnu] "termite",^[7] there are cases in which they are found in non-nasal environments, e.g.[hã~hĩ] (emphatic particle).^[10] Simple vowels can form variousdiphthongs, mainly/iu,ui,ia,ai,au,ua,ɨu,uɨ/.^[11]

Contrary to Waurá, Yawalapiti has no/e/ sound. This is because Proto-Arawak*e has evolved as/ɨ/ while, at the same time, Proto-Arawak*i and*ɨ have merged resulting into/i/ in Yawalapiti.^[12]

Syllables in Yawalapiti can be of the type V, CV and, only in word-final position, (C)Vʔ. The stress may fall on the penultimate or on the last syllable of a word.^[11]

As otherArawakan languages, Yawalapiti isagglutinative and makes use ofaffixes, especiallysuffixes, to convey basic grammatical relations. Nominal suffixes can be divided into two groups:classifiers and derivational suffixes.

The main classifiers found in Yawalapiti refer to the shape of an object or some other characteristic of it, like texture, length and position.^[13]

These morphemes attach to adjectives when they refer to a noun that needs a classifier, as in the following example.

Derivational suffixes are applied to primitive nouns to form new compound nouns. Sometimes, however, the meaning of the original noun is not known.

Nominal and verbal prefixes intervene in the formation of possessive phrases, and can indicate the subject or the object of a verb phrase. The set of possessive prefixes of Yawalapiti is very similar to those of the other languages of the Arawakan branch.

In vowel initial nouns and verbs, the formsni- andpi- are frequently used with roots beginning inu, while the prefixaw- appears systematically beforea. In nouns and verbs beginning in consonant, the formti- occurs only when the root starts withh (in all the other cases,hi- is used). The third person plural is actually acircumfix formed by the correspondent prefix of the third person singular and the pluralizer suffix-pa. When nouns beginning withp,k,t,m,n,w andj are modified by the prefix of second person singular or plural, their initial sounds are subject to the followingmorphophonemic changes.^[15]

p →ɾ

k →tʃ

t →ts

m →ɲ

n →ɲ

w → Ø

j → Ø

Thus, for example,-kuʃu "head" becomeshi-tʃuʃu "your head" (butnu-kuʃu "my head"),-palaka "face" becomeshi-ɾalaka "your face" (butnu-palata "my face") and-jakanati "saliva" becomeshi-akanati "your saliva" (butnu-jakanati "my saliva").

Apart from possessive prefixes,alienable nouns also receive alienable possessive suffixes, as in the case ofuku "arrow", which becomesn-uku-la "my arrow",p-uku-la "your arrow",in-uku-la "his/her arrow", etc.

Independent pronouns of first and second person are listed in the table below.^[16]

For the third person, Yawalapiti speakers use demonstrative pronouns, which are also marked for gender.^[16]

From atypological point of view, the order of constituents in Yawalapiti is SVO. In genitive constructions, the possessor precedes the possessed item. The same is true for other modifiers, especially demonstratives and numerals, while adjectives are free to occur before or after their referent.^[17]

• Mujica, Mitzila Isabel Ortega (1992).Aspectos fonológicos e gramaticais da língua yawalapiti (aruak)(PDF) (M.A. thesis) (in Portuguese). Campinas: Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 2020-07-09.
• Seki, Lucy (1999). "The Upper Xingu as an incipient linguistic area". In Dixon, R. M. W.; Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (eds.).The Amazonian Languages. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 417–430.ISBN 0-521-57893-0.

• Carvalho, Fernando O. de. 2016.Internal and Comparative Reconstruction in Yawalapiti: Palatalization and Rule Telescoping.International Journal of American Linguistics 82 (3).

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• Languages of Xingu Indigenous Park

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