Pekodian languages

Language group From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Pekodian languages are a subgroup of the Cariban language family. The languages are spoken in Mato Grosso and Pará states of Brazil and make up the southernmost branch of Cariban.[1]

Quick facts Geographic distribution, Linguistic classification ...
Pekodian
Geographic
distribution
Mato Grosso and Pará, Brazil
Linguistic classificationCariban
  • Pekodian
Subdivisions
Language codes
Glottologpeko1235
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Meira and Chousou-Polydouri (2015) consider Pekodian to have descended from Cariban migrations that came from the north, as Cariban linguistic diversity is concentrated in northern South America.[2]

The term Pekodian was coined in 2005 by Sérgio Meira and Bruna Franchetto on the basis of a cognate word for ‘woman’ found in these languages, respectively Bakairi pekodo and Ikpeng petkom, but not found in any of the other Cariban languages compared against them.[3]

Languages

The Pekodian languages are:[4][5][6]

Internal classification

Carvalho classifies the Pekodian languages as follows.[1]

The term Kampot is coined by Carvalho (2020) from the lexical innovation *kampot ‘fire’ defining the dialect cluster.

Sound changes

A number of sound changes are shared between Bakairí and Ikpeng:[3]

  • In intervocalic position, Proto-Cariban *p becomes w, *t becomes d (further developing to r in Ikpeng), and *k becomes g.
  • Proto-Cariban *r becomes l in certain (as-yet undetermined) shared environments.
  • Proto-Cariban *w becomes p word-initially (though there are some exceptions in Ikpeng).
  • Proto-Cariban *t palatalizes to tʃ before e and i. (Bakairí further develops tʃ to ʃ, ʒ, s, or z.)
  • Possibly, the Proto-Cariban sequence *nu-ru reduced to *n-ru, yielding Bakairí nu and Ikpeng ŋ-ru, although these results can also be explained in other ways.

Loanwords

Pekodian languages have various loanwords from non-Cariban languages, including Juruna and Arawakan languages.[1]

Pekodian may have also influenced Bororoan and other non-Cariban language families.

References

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