Abstract
Abstract The Cariban language family is made up of some 40 to 60 languages spoken in lowland South America in the Amazon, Orinoco, and Xingu river drainages (see figure 1.1, Lizarralde 1987). Until recently, so little linguistic work had been done that genetic subgroupings in the Cariban language family (and even the inclusion of some languages within the family) still could not be reliably determined. While the situation has improved dramatically in the last few years, and a reasonable at tempt at classification is not out of the question, much remains to be done to document the remaining languages. A great many Cariban languages have become ex tinct, several more are on the verge of extinction (more may have died out in the 1980s and 1990s), and several are spoken by groups of fewer than 500 people. Any discussion of the entire Cariban language family must begin with an urgent call for further field research. If many of these languages are not described soon, they will never be described. In this chapter I review previous attempts to subclassify languages in the Cariban family and then discuss the current status of linguistic research on each Cariban language for which I present data.
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