[full citation needed] Apurinã indigenous communities are predominantly found along the Purus River, in the Northwestern Amazon region in Brazil, in the Amazonas state (Pickering 2009: 2)[full citation needed].
Its population is currently spread over twenty-seven different indigenous lands along the Purus River (Apurinã PIB).
It is predicted, however, that fewer than 30% of the Apurinã population can speak the language fluently (Facundes 2000: 35)[full citation needed].
A definite number of speakers cannot be firmly determined because of the regional scattered presence of its people.
The spread of Apurinã speakers to different regions was initially caused by conflict or disease, which has consequently led natives to lose the ability to speak the language for lack of practice and also because of interactions with other communities.
[full citation needed] The low transmission and cultivation of the language result in the risk of endangerment.
Because they are taught Portuguese or Spanish instead, a further reduction in the number of people that speak the language could occur over the years, eventually leading it to become extinct.
They encode gender, person, or number or often a combination of all three and can stand alone or follow a verb or proposition.
He starts off by introducing the domain of morphology, followed by constructors of a word and makes reference to morphemes, allomorphs, bound and free formatives.
Within morphemes and word-structure, Facundes (2000: 122) mentions that although the meaning of word is not always transparent, there are two separate classes in Apurinã.
kuku-wako-ruman-PL-Mkuku-wako-ruman-PL-M"men"*uwa3Mmuteka-wako-rurun-PL-M*uwa muteka-wako-ru3M run-PL-M"They ran"nu-su-pe-ka-ko1SG-go-PFV-PRED-FUTnota1SGwatxatodaynu-su-pe-ka-ko nota watxa1SG-go-PFV-PRED-FUT 1SG today"I'll get going now"As presented by Facundes (2000: 125), each of the sentences above contain a plural marker wako-ru, which is used exclusively with nouns.
They are a type of bound formative encoding a grammatical constructor associated with a specific word class.
In example 4a provided by Facundes (2000: 137), wako-ru is a plural suffix and is after the base morpheme kuku, 'man'.
In the example provided by Facundes (2000), some bound formatives float in a sentence but maintain a general meaning.
nota-ko1SG-FUTsuka-rugive-3M.Onota-ko suka-ru1SG-FUT give-3M.OI'll give away to himIn the above example, the future is signified by the attaching of the morpheme -ko to the pronoun nota, the first-person singular, "I".
'I will not' is symbolised by the attaching of the morpheme –ko to a 'not' proposition, giving the sentence an overall future meaning (Facundes 2000: 410).
MipaMipaimata-ruknow-3M.Oa-sãkire1PL-languageMipa imata-ru a-sãkireMipa know-3M.O 1PL-languageMipa knows our languageThe latter example is also considered to be non-tense and indicates a present timeframe.
Thus, whenever no –ko morpheme is included for a noun or pronoun base, the event can be assumed to have taken place in the past, the present, or the near future.
The example provided by Facundes (2000: 515), consisted of a timeframe exceeding the speech locus by only a couple of days.