It is spoken by the Ayoreo people, an indigenous ethnic group traditionally living on a combined hunter-gatherer and farming lifestyle.
[4] The prototypical constituent order is subject-verb-object, as seen in the following examples:[5] SérgioSérgioch-ingo3-showcarataijaguararoiskintometoRamon.RamonSérgio ch-ingo caratai aroi tome Ramon.Sérgio 3-show jaguar skin to Ramon‘Sérgio showed the jaguar’s skin to Ramon’.EngaCOORDore3Pch-ijnoque3-carryVíctorVíctorajatowardsseñóraseñoraEmíliaEmíliai-guijnai.houseEnga ore ch-ijnoque Víctor aja señóra Emília i-guijnai.COORD 3P 3-carry Víctor towards señora Emília house‘And they carried Víctor to Señora Emília’s house’.Ayoreo is a fusional language.
[7][page needed] Consider the following paradigm, which has prefixes marking person and suffixes marking number:[8] When the verb root contains a nasal, there are nasalized variants of the agreement affixes: Ayoreo is a mood-prominent language.
[6] Nouns can be divided into possessable and non-possessable; possessor agreement is expressed through a prefixation.
[9][page needed] The syntax of Ayoreo is characterized by the presence of para-hypotactical structures.