Kuikuro

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The Upper Xingu Carib language is classified, since the work of Karl Von den Steinen, as belonging to the Carib family (Steinen, 1894). Now we know that it pertains to one of the two southern branches of the family (Meira & Franchetto, 2005).
The Upper Xingu Carib language has two main dialectal variants: the one spoken by the Kuikuro and Matipu people, and that spoken by the Kalapalo and Nahukwá. These variants can be distinguished by differences in lexicon and, above all, by differences in their rhythmic structures. Linguistic identity is one of the most important symbols of social identity among the local groups.

Phonologically and morphosyntactically, the Upper Xingu Carib language shows characteristics that are unique in the Carib linguistic family. Phonologically, we find articulatory dorsalization, a total dissolution of consonantal groups, lenition processes and the impossibility of any kind of segment in syllabic coda. The Kuikuro is a head final language and it is ergative, from the point of view of the morphosyntactic typology. The morphology is extremely rich, with many processes of derivation and valency change; there are five nominal and verbal inflectional classes. The pattern of constituents order in Kuikuro is complement-head (OV). The internal argument of the verb is the patient of a transitive event or the theme of an intransitive event, occurring strictly in pre-verbal position, and forming a phonological unit with the verb. Internal arguments are not marked morphologically for case. With transitive verbs, the agent behaves as a postpositional phrase occuring after the OV sequence in a pragmatically neutral order, or before OV when topicalized. There are no auxiliaries.

The orthography for the Carib Upper Xingu language and its variants was developed during intensive courses organized to train Indigenous teachers and it is used to write educational materials for native schools. It is currently used in the Project for transcriptions, besides phonetic transcriptions. A vast collection of written texts is produced by the Indigenous teachers and part of them has been already organized as books used in village schools.

The Kuikuro still speak their mother language. Speakers of other Upper Xingu languages are limited to 10%. Speakers of Portuguese are 50% of the population (various degrees of fluency, but the majority of the speakers of  Portuguese are men 40 years old or younger). In spite of the still healthy linguistic situation, we have been witnessing an acceleration in the pace of change in the last few years. It is increasingly common the presence of governmental officials, researchers, journalists, representatives of NGOs, photographers, film makers, doctors, tourists, televisions and other midia. Indians travel constantly to neighbouring cities and to the main Brazilian capitals. The presence of schools in the villages as well as the increasing number of Indians attending city schools contributes to the use of Portuguese among the young generation. Portuguese is the lingua franca in contacts with white society, and increasingly common in the vocabulary of the Upper Xingu languages. Bilingualism is increasing rapidly.


References

Meira, Sérgio & Franchetto, Bruna - "The Southern Cariban Languages and the Cariban Family". International Journal of American Linguistics, vol 71, n. 2: 127-190. Chicago: Chicago University Press. 2005.

Steinen, Karl von den.  Unter den naturvolkern Zentral-Brasileins. Berlin: Dietrich reamer. 1894.