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Paresi (also called Haliti-Paresi or Paresi-Haliti by the speakers themselves) is an Arawakan language spoken in Brazil. There are approximately 2000 Paresi people, and around 1800 (~90% of the population) speak the language. The Paresi live in the state of Mato Grosso, more specifically in nine indigenous territories: Rio Formoso, Utiariti, Estação Parecis, Estivadinho, Pareci, Juininha, Figueira, Ponte de Pedra, and Uirapuru. In terms of endangerment, it is not in immediate danger. It is used in many everyday domains, but there is a lack of transmission to younger generations, as well as an evident language shift to Portuguese. This is a result of Portuguese being used in education and healthcare, as well as the integration of Brazilian culture among the Paresi people, creating changes in their language and cultural practices.[2]
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History
Paresi speaking people were deeply affected by contact with Portuguese colonizers, whom they first encountered in 1718. For over 100 years, they were enslaved as miners in Mato Grosso. As Paresi speakers lived in rubber-dense areas, many were driven from their homes or taken as guides by prospective tappers in the late 19th century; this exploitation and aggression would drive them almost to extinction in the 20th century. Several Catholic missionaries of the Anchieta congregation forced Paresi children into boarding schools, where attempts were made to suppress their language, and also assumed control of the entire Utiariti area from the local Waimaré people.[3]
All of this disruption led to several subgroups of Paresis being lost either due to extinction or assimilation into other groups, as well as a shift in most groups towards speaking Brazilian Portuguese rather than Paresi. Some groups however are still making efforts to maintain Paresi traditional cultural practices as well as the language, such as the Kozarene who make traditional beer, and bread, and wear Paresi headdresses, and skirts.[4]
Language family and stock
Paresi belongs to the Arawak language family, one of the largest and most widespread language families in South America. Payne (1991) used lexical retention to determine language classification, and placed Paresi in the Central branch. Aikhenvald (1999) and Ramirez (2001) group Paresi into the Paresi-Xingu branch.[5]
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There has been some documentation for Paresi. A sketch grammar served as a preliminary description of discourse, clause, and word structure.[6] A preliminary dictionary has been compiled based on the variety spoken in the Utiariti area.[7][full citation needed] Phonology work has also been done,[8][full citation needed][9][full citation needed][10][full citation needed][11][12][full citation needed][13][full citation needed][14][full citation needed] more specifically with the phonetics and phonology of the Waimaré dialect,[15][full citation needed] and a phonological description of major Paresi variants using feature geometry.[16][full citation needed] Brandão has written a verbal morphology description dealing with verb classes, tense, aspect, and modality.[17][full citation needed] A morphosyntax description addressing functional morphemes with respect to negation, aspect, and mood has also been written.[18] There are other pedagogical materials available[19][full citation needed] in addition to student theses written by undergraduate Paresi speakers from the State University of Mato Grosso.
The Museu do Índio has an ongoing language project for Paresi, coordinated by Glauber Romling. The goal of the project is to involve the indigenous community by offering basic archival and linguistic training to analyze speech data in the form of mythical tales and sociolinguistic interviews.
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Consonants
There are 17 contrastive consonant phonemes in Paresi, with three marginal phonemes that only appear in very restricted contexts. These marginal phonemes are analyzed to be their own phonemes, because unlike other palatalized consonant allophones in the language, these phonemes can appear word-initially before /a/, which would not trigger palatalization.
Vowels
There are 6 contrastive vowel phonemes in Paresi, although the nasalized vowels are restricted in the contexts in which they may occur and are occasionally emphatic allophones of their oral equivalents, the front nasal vowels are the only ones with distributions complementary to their respective oral vowels. Paresi exhibits a form of rhinoglottophilia in that vowels adjacent to a glottal fricative onset to a final syllable are nasalized and exhibit breathy phonation.
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Paresi is a polysynthetic language, whose morpheme boundaries are clear-cut and easy to parse. Affixes are very productive in the language, with prefixes being attached mainly to verbs, and to some nouns to form stative predicates. Different sets of suffixes exist for nouns and verbs; nominal suffixes encode possession and plurals, and verbal suffixes encode aspect, valency changes, and number. Personal and clausal clitics are quite numerous, with personal clitics marking possession and the subject, and clausal enclitics signalling future, past, or irrealis.[21] Adnominal (appearing before nouns) and adverbial demonstratives are also extensive, with a 4-way split in adnominal demonstratives: proximal, medial, distal, and non-visual, as well as a distinction in number.
Personal Pronouns
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person | natyo | witso |
| 2nd person | hitso | xitso |
| 3rd person | hatyo, eze | hatyonae, ezenae |
The third person pronouns are identical to the proximal and medial demonstratives, eze and hatyo. Little syntactic distinction exists between the two save for the fact that hatyo may be cliticized to /ha-/ to reflect a third person singular reflexive, otherwise the third person personal pronouns are identical to demonstratives.
(1)
hatyo-nae
3SG-PL
kakoa
COM
ali
here
witso
1PL
hoka
CON
wi-tyaona-ita
1PL-live-IFV
'We came with them to live here.'
Pronominal Clitics
| Set A | Set B | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | ||
| 1st person | na- | za- | no- | wi- | |
| 2nd person | ha- | wa- | hi- | xi- | |
| 3rd person | V | ∅- | -ha | ∅- | |
| N | -ha/-nae | e- | |||
Pronominal clitics reflect subject agreement on verbs, with Set A marking subject agreement on agentive verbs, and Set B marking subject agreement on non-agentive verbs and possession on nouns. The suffix /-nae/ is a generic plural that is used with the third person plural, with /-ha/ being specific. Because these clitics are mandatory, Paresi is a strongly pro-drop language and subject pronouns are optional.
(2)
(natyo)
(1SG)
no-ka-nakaira-ene
1SG-ATTR-food-3OBJ
'I ate it.'
Valency Change
Paresi has three forms of valency decreasing for verbs morphologically:
- the inactive inchoative /-oa/
- the reflexive /-wi/
- the reciprocal /-kakoa/
The suffix /-oa/ is used to express the middle voice for some transitives, the reflexive for various verbs of changing the position of one’s body or taking care of one’s self, and the passive for several verbs of harm or detriment.
(3)
hati-kanatse
house-mouth
ma-txihola-ty-oa
NEG-door-TH-MM
‘The door of the house opened’
(4)
katxolo
dog
etolits-oa
lie.down-MM
‘The dog lays down (the dog lays itself down)’
(5)
hala-halo-ty-oa-heta
paint-FEM-TH-MM-PERF
‘She painted herself’
(6)
tyalok-oa
bite-MM
‘Get bitten’
The suffix /-wi/ is a much more straightforward reflexive, and is exclusively used with verbs that would normally have two very distinct arguments, unlike those made reflexive by /-oa/. The reciprocal /-kakoa/ may be used with doubled plural morphology to indicated multiple reciprocal pairs, and may also attach to a noun in addition to a verb to indicate the reciprocal participants making it a “discontinuous reciprocal”.
Valency is increased by attaching either the causative prefix /a-/, or the causative suffix /-ki/, or both. Causatives may also be formed periphrastically with the verb /moka/.
Verbal Modality
Paresi modality and expression of verbal reality is intertwined with the evidentiality of said verbs. Paresi has three counterfactual modalities:
- frustrative (an action that was unfortunately not achieved, or did not go as expected)
- dubitative (an action may or may not be true)
- desiderative (the action is desired by the speaker)
Of those three, the first two distinguish evidentiality and certainty.
The frustrative marker /zaore~zakore/ is used to indicate that an action did not or could not be achieved or finished, and comes before the clause that expresses said action, or acts as a particle and indicates an undesirable outcome.
(7)
kazatya
jacuba
wi-tsere-hena
1PL-drink-TRS
zakore
FRUST
a-heka-e-tsa
CAUS-be.drunk-CAUS-TH
witso
1PL
‘We were drinking jacuba, and unfortunately we got drunk.’
The other frustrative marker /motya/ indicates that the verb contradicts one’s assumptions or expectations drawn from visual evidence. If one were to see that the sky was cloudy, and from that expected it to rain, but then it did not, they would utter the following:
(8)
motya
FRUST
atyo
TOP
ite
FUT
one-hena
water-TRS
wi-hiye
1PL-BEN
‘Apparently it was going to rain (but it did not).’
The two dubitative markers, /zamani/ and /kala/ are different in levels of certainty, the formers marks something that the speaker is quite uncertain of, while the latter indicates a non-absolute, but high degree of certainty, the speaker may have even witnessed the event personally.
(9)
Sandro
Sandro
zamani
DUB
Valeria
Valeria
kokoa
COM
ka-itsani
ATTR-child
aoka-ha
say-PL
‘They say Valeria is pregnant by Sandro (but I doubt it).’
(10)
Kala
DUB
Enoharetse
Enoharetse
tyaona-ita
live-IFV
eye
this
ha-wawa-hare-nae
3S-be.alone-MASC-PL
‘Enoharetse was already living alone here (I think).’
Finally, there is the desiderative marker /katsani/ indicating a first person wish.
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Paresi is a nominative-accusative language, in that subjects of transitive and intransitive verbs are marked identically, and the object of a transitive differently. Paresi does not overtly mark case, but indicates subjects and objects primarily through word order: sentences where the object is not a pronoun are usually ordered Subject-Object-Verb,
(11)
Paula
Paula
iyakaniti
pictures
hotikitsa
show
‘Paula showed pictures.’
and sentences with a pronominal object are typically ordered Subject-Verb-Object.
(12)
Baba
father
aotyaitsa
teach
natyo
me
hoka
then
‘Then my father taught me.’
Since the person and number of subjects are always marked with verb prefixes, subjects that have already been introduced are mostly omitted. If the object is established and third person, then it is also usually dropped in favour of the object suffix -ene, so sentences are frequently OV, SV, or simply V.
(13)
No-kanakair-ene
1SG-eat-3OBJ
‘I ate it.’
However, as Paresi is a very topic-focused language, the most relevant information, be that object or subject, tends to be put first in a sentence, making OSV a very common word order in Paresi, leading to some ambiguity if the arguments are not of different persons or numbers.
(14)
KatxolohokotsetxoaO
small.dog
ala
FOC
aniS
wasp
xakatetyaV
sting
‘The wasp was stinging the dog.’
These cases can be disambiguated with the topic marker atyo, which marks a new conversational subject, or the focus marker ala, which usually marks an object that has been moved to first position. These, however, are optional, so in subject and object must occasionally be discerned by context.
(15)
Wi-halanatseO
our-dog
menetseS
anaconda
toka-olatyaV
hold-tie
‘An anaconda held and tied our dog.’
Paresi sentences also very occasionally have OVS word order:
(16)
Kala
DUB
kolohoO
forest
miyatyaV
destroy
mahalitihareS
non-native
hoka
then
‘Then the non-native destroyed the forest.’
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Numerals
The first four numbers in Paresi are lexical items (listed below), and anything above 4 is counted using base-5, using body parts (ie: fingers, toes, hands, feet).[22]
| Numeral | Paresi |
|---|---|
| 1 | hatita |
| 2 | hinama |
| 3 | hanama |
| 4 | zalakakoa |
(17)
hinama-li
two-CLF:round
ala
FOC
konare
cará.fish
Ø-noloka
3SG-pull
‘She caught two cará fishes.’
(18)
kahi-ti
hand-UNPOSS
halakoa
one.side
kahe
hand
haiya,
IND2
kahi-ti
hand-UNPOSS
tyotya
everything/all
‘Sometimes five days (one hand), or ten days (all the hands).’
Quantifiers
Paresi has the following quantifiers:
- tyotya 'all'
- kahare 'many, a lot'
- inira 'few'
- taita 'only’
The first three can appear independently as pronouns, and all four modify nouns. Tyotya, kahare, and inira can appear both before and after nouns, whereas inira can only appear before nouns. Unlike demonstratives, these quantifiers can also take personal clitics and aspect markers, which are normally only found on verbs.[22]
(19)
kozaka-ene
already-PST
ali-yere-nae
here-NMLZ-PL
tyotya
everything/all
Ø-zane
3SG-go
‘The people from here, all of them were already gone.’
(20)
kozaka-ene
already-PST
ali-yere-nae
here-NMLZ-PL
tyotya
everything/all
Ø-zane
3SG-go
‘The people from here, all of them were already gone.’
(21)
tyotya
all
haliti
Paresi.Indian
Ø-tyaon-ita-ene
3SG-live-IFV-PST
'All the Paresi people lived there.'
Kahare ‘many, a lot’ can take both countable nouns and uncountable nouns. Examples (24) and (25) show kahare taking clitics and aspect markers respectively.
(22)
hatyohiyeta
then
kahare
many
zoima
child
Ø-tyaona-te
3SG-be.born-FUT
hitiya
again
‘Then, many children were born.’
(23)
oliti
game
kahare
many
Ø-aitsa-ha-ita-ha
3SG-kill-PL-IFV-PL
‘They killed a lot of game.’
(24)
wi-kahare
1PL-a.lot
'There were a lot of us.'
(25)
kahare-hena
a.lot-TRS
haiya
IND2
haliti
person
ena
man
ohiro
woman
zoaha
and
Ø-waiyore-ta
3SG-know-IFV
'Many Paresi people, men, and women, know.'
Inira appears before nouns and can also take the plural –nae, shown in Example (26).
(26)
waiye-hare
good-MASC
Ø-bete-hena
3SG-sell-TRS
hoka
CON
Ø-iya-h-ita-ha
3SG-buy-PL-IFV-PL
inira-nae
few-PL
atyo
TOP
'They sold beautiful things, but they bought few things.'
(27)
no-zakaihaka-tya
1SG-tell.story-TH
inira
few
'I will tell a little bit of the story.'
Taita can come before or after the noun, but does not appear as its own independent pronoun. In (29), taita is being used as a non-verbal predicate.
(28)
imoti
non-Indian
taita
only
ali
here
tyaona
COP
'Here there were only non-Indian people.'
(29)
hatyo
that
taita
only
'That is it.'
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