Borowa language

Not to be confused with Maku language or Maco language.

Borowa
Máku
Spoken in	Brazil–Venezuela border
Ethnicity	Borowa people
Extinct	2000–2002
Language family	Kalianan ? Borowa
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Linguist List	099
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The Borówa language, commonly known as Macu, Makú, Macó, or, to distinguish it from other languages given this name, Máku, is an unclassified language spoken on the Brazil–Venezuela border in Roraima along the Uraricoera River. The Borowa territory was formerly between the Padamo and Cunucunuma rivers.

The last speaker died between 2000 and 2002. Aryon Rodrigues and Ernesto Migliazza have worked on the language, and there is enough material for a grammar, though as of 2010 this had not been published.

Maku is not a proper name, but rather an Arawakan term for unintelligible languages.

Phonology

Borowa has six oral vowels, /i y ɨ u e a/, and four nasal vowels, /ĩ ũ ẽ ã/. Length is contrastive, but only on an initial CV syllable of a polysyllabic word. The most complex syllable is CCVC. There is no contrastive stress or tone.

Consonants are stops /p b t d k ʔ/, the affricate /ts/, fricatives /s ʃ x h/, voiced stops /b d/, nasals /m n/, the lateral "r" (perhaps /ɺ/?), and the approximants /w j/.

Grammar

Borowa is highly polysynthetic and predominantly suffixing. There is clusivity but no genders or classifiers. The TAM system is very complex.

Genetic relations

Suggested genetic relations involving Borowa include

• with Arawakan
• with Warao
• within a Kalianan grouping with Arutani–Sape (aka Makú)
• within a Macro-Puinavean grouping with Nadahup (aka Makú), Katukinan, & Arutani–Sape

Kaufman (1990) finds the Kalianan proposal "promising", though he is now dated.

Bibliography

• Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
• Kaufman, Terrence. (1990). Language history in South America: What we know and how to know more. In D. L. Payne (Ed.), Amazonian linguistics: Studies in lowland South American languages (pp. 13–67). Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-70414-3.
• Kaufman, Terrence. (1994). The native languages of South America. In C. Mosley & R. E. Asher (Eds.), Atlas of the world's languages (pp. 46–76). London: Routledge.