Hixkaryana is one of the Carib languages, spoken by just over 500 people on the Nhamundá River

Nhamundá River

Nhamundá River is a river forming part of the border between the Amazonas and Pará states in north-western Brazil.-See also:*List of rivers of Amazonas*List of rivers of Pará-References:*...

, a tributary of the Amazon River

Amazon River

The Amazon of South America is the second longest river in the world and by far the largest by waterflow with an average discharge greater than the next seven largest rivers combined...

 in Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

. It is one of a few known natural languages that normally use object–verb–subject word order, and may have been the first such language to be described (by linguist Desmond C. Derbyshire

Desmond C. Derbyshire

Desmond Cyril Derbyshire was a linguist who specialized in Carib languages.He is best known for his work on Hixkaryana, known for its object–verb–subject word order...

).

Phonology

Hixkaryana has the following consonant phoneme

Phoneme

In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....

s:

	Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...		Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...		Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate... or palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...		Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	m		n		ɲ
Plosive	p	b	t	d	tʃ	ɟ	k
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...	ɸ		s		ʃ			h
Tap			ɾ		ɽˡ
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...					j		w

is a retroflex tap with a lateral

Lateral consonant

A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....

 release.

• The orthography used is as follows: /tʃ ɟ/ = ; /ɸ ʃ/ = ; /ɲ/ = ; /ɽˡ/ = ; /j/ = .

The vowels are /e/, /ɯ/, /u/, /ɔ/, and /æ/, written ⟨e⟩, ⟨ɨ⟩, ⟨u⟩, ⟨o⟩, and ⟨a⟩.

Grammar

In Hixkaryana, arguments are indexed on the verb by means of person prefixes. These prefixes form an inverse-like pattern in which the argument highest in the hierarchy 2nd > 1st > 3rd is indexed on the verb. If the object of a transitive verb outranks the subject according to this hierarchy, the appropriate O-prefix is used; otherwise, an A-prefix is used.
| colspan="2" | A-prefixes >

O-prefixes |- | 1A

0-/ɨ-

1O

>- | 2A

m(ɨ)-

2O

>- | 1+2A

t(ɨ)-

1+2O

>- | 3A

n(ɨ)-/j-

Intransitive verbs take prefixes mostly similar to the transitive prefixes given above. The arguments' grammatical number is indexed on the verb by means of portmanteau suffixes that combine tense, aspect, mood, and number.

In most cases, the person prefixes unambiguously determine which of the arguments is the subject and which is the object. When both the subject and the object are third person, however, the person prefix is inadequate to fully determine the identity of the arguments. In these situations, therefore, word order is crucial in determining their identity. The example below, "toto yonoye kamara", cannot be given the SVO reading "the man ate the jaguar"; the OVS reading -- "the jaguar ate the man" -- is the only possible one.

Hixkaryana has a object–verb–subject word order.

toto	yonoye			kamara
toto	y-	ono	-ye	kamara
person	3SG-	eat	-DIST.PAST.COMPL	jaguar
"The jaguar ate the man."

Indirect objects, however, follow the subject:

bɨryekomo	yotahahono				wosɨ	tɨnyo	wya
bɨryekomo	y-	otaha	-ho	-no	wosɨ	tɨnyo	wya
boy	3SG-	hit	-CAUS	-IMM.PAST	woman	her-husband	by
"The woman caused her husband to hit the boy."

Moreover, word order in non-finite embedded clauses is SOV. http://www.ling.umd.edu/~soltan/LING419B/Handouts/handout3.pdf Like most other languages with objects preceding the verb, it is postpositional.

External links

• Hixkaryana Linguistic Overview
• Metathesis in Hixkaryana
• Ethnologue report on Hixkaryana