Abstract
Abstract: This paper presents a succinct reconstruction of the segmental phonology of Proto-Maweti-Guarani, the hypothetical protolanguage from which modern Mawe, Aweti and the Tupi-Guarani branches of the Tupi linguistic family have evolved. Based on about 300 cognate sets from the authors' field data (for Mawe and Aweti) and from Mello's reconstruction (2000) for Proto-Tupi-Guarani (with additional information from other works; and with a few changes concerning certain doubtful features, such as the status of stem-final lenis consonants *r and *ß, and the distinction of *c and *č ), the consonants and vowels of Proto-Maweti-Guarani were reconstructed with the help of the traditional historical-comparative method. The development of the reconstructed segments is then traced from the protolanguage to each of the modern branches. A comparison with other claims made about Proto-Maweti-Guarani is given in the conclusion.
Highlights
Of the ten branches of the Tupi family – one of the largest language families in South America, with about 50 languages spoken in lowland South America, mostly south of the Amazon river (Rodrigues, 1999, Rodrigues; Cabral, 2012) – three (Mawe, Aweti, Tupi-Guarani) form a single superordinate branch, here called Maweti-Guarani
The main purpose of this paper is to report on some of the results obtained by the authors in their ongoing efforts to reconstruct the protolanguage of the Maweti-Guarani branch, for which basic reconstructions of segmental phonology have been proposed (Rodrigues; Dietrich, 1997), Rodrigues (2005, 2007), (Rodrigues; Cabral, 2012), and the subordinate Proto-Tupi-Guarani, which has been reconstructed in more detail, including phonology and aspects of morphosyntax in Lemle (1971), Jensen (1998, 1999), Schleicher (1998), Mello (2000), and implicitly in (Rodrigues; Dietrich, 1997)
Portuguese peteca ‘shuttlecock’); only for ashamed does this seem unlikely. Given this suspicious status of t : t : *t, we propose that t : t : *č/c is the basic correspondence for PMAG *t, in non-morpheme-final, non-nasal contexts
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