Urubú Sign Language

Abstract

1 Urubui belongs to the Tupi-Guarani language family and is spoken in the state of Maranhao, Brazil. Data have been collected during field trips to the village of Capitao Xatarixa on a tributary of the Gurupi river during the years 1962-1965 under the auspices of the Summer Institute of Linguistics and the Museu Nacional of Rio de Janeiro. Thanks are due to the Servigo de Protegao aos Indios for granting permission for the field trips and to the Indian agent, Joao Evangelista de Carvalho, for his assistance. A mute lived in the village of Capitao Xatarixa, which facilitated learning the sign language. This paper in its present form was written at the 1966 linguistic workshop of the Summer Institute of Linguistics of the University of Oklahoma. I am grateful to Irvine Davis for his many suggestions in its presentation. The first draft of this paper was in the form of a term paper presented to George Grace of the University of Hawaii in partial fulfillment for a course in Ethnolinguistics. I have benefited from both the seminar in Ethnolinguistics and the linguistic workshop. 2 Mabel Hubbard Bell, the wife of Alexander Graham Bell, had scarlet fever at the age of four The author made a trip to a village four days from the Indian post in June of 1965. Our journey took us through four villages and we remained in the fifth. We had in our