Arawak language

Etymology

Arawak is a tribal name in reference to the main crop food, the cassava root, commonly known as manioc. The cassava root is a popular staple for millions of people in South America, Asia and Africa.^[11] It is a woody shrub grown in tropical or subtropical regions. Speakers of Arawak also identify themselves as Lokono, which translates as "the people". They call their language Lokono Dian, "the people's speech".^[12]

Alternative names of the same language include Arawák, Arahuaco, Aruak, Arowak, Arawac, Araguaco, Aruaqui, Arwuak, Arrowukas, Arahuacos, Locono, and Luccumi.^[13]

Consonants

William Pet observes an additional /p/ in loanwords.^[15]

Vowels

Pet notes that phonetic realization of /o/ varies between [o] and [u].^[15]

Verbs

Arawak verbs are classified either as 'event' or 'non-event' (aka 'stative') verbs. Most stative verbs express adjectival meanings, similarly to in a number of Native American languages, genetic clarification aside. Event verbs require subjects, and may take objects.^[16]

There are two exceptional classes of verb - the copula to 'to be' (which has no semantic relation with the article to, aside from that the copula is often omitted around the article), and a dummy verb. This dummy verb "behaves morphologically like an event verb".^[17]

Pronouns

The personal pronouns are shown below. The forms on the left are free forms, which can stand alone. The forms on the right are bound forms (prefixes), which must be attached to the front of a verb, a noun, or a postposition.^[18]

Cross-referencing affixes

All verbs are sectioned into transitive, active transitive, and stative intransitive.^[14]

A= Sa=cross referencing prefix

O=So= cross referencing suffix

Gender

In the Arawak language, there are two distinct genders of masculine and feminine. They are used in cross-referencing affixes, in demonstratives, in nominalization and in personal pronouns. Typical pronominal genders, for example, are feminine and non-feminine. The markers go back to Arawak third-person singular cross-referencing: feminine -(r)u, masculine -(r)i^[13]

Number

Arawak Languages do distinguish singular and plural, however plural is optional unless the referent is a person. Markers used are *-na/-ni (animate/human plural) and *-pe (inanimate/animate non-human plural).^[13]

Possession

Arawak nouns are fragmented into inalienably and alienably possessed. Inalienably crossed nouns include things such as body parts, terms for kinship and common nouns like food selections. Deverbal nominalization belong to that grouping. Both forms of possession are marked with prefixes (A/Sa). Inalienably possessed nouns have what is known as an "unpossessed" form (also known as "absolute") marked with the suffix *-tfi or *-hV. Alienably possessed nouns take one of the suffixes *-ne/ni, *-te, *-re, *i/e, or *-na. All suffixes used as nominalizers.^[19]

Negation

Arawak languages have a negative prefix ma- and attributive-relative prefix ka-. An example of the use is ka-witi-w ("a woman with good eyes") and ma-witti-w ("a woman with bad eyes", i.e., a blind woman).

Tenses

Tenses are added at the end of a sentence: past tense is indicated with bura or bora (from ubura "before"), future tense with dikki (from adiki "after"), present continuous tense uses loko or roko.^{[20][21][further explanation needed]}