300 years ago, the Jukude territory was between the Padamo and Cunucunuma rivers to the southwest.
There are currently no speakers or rememberers of Máku and no-one identifies as Jukude any longer.
Aryon Rodrigues and Ernesto Migliazza, as well as Iraguacema Lima Maciel, worked on the language, and the data was collected into a grammar by Chris Rogers published in 2020.
Maku ~ Mako (in Spanish orthography Macu or Maco) is an Arawakan term for unintelligible languages and people held in servitude in the Orinoco region.
[3] Suggested genetic relations involving Máku include: Kaufman (1990) finds the Kalianan proposal "promising", though he is now dated.
/s, ts, n, k/ are palatalized to [ʃ, tʃ, ɲ, c] before /i, y/, while /t, d, l/ become [tʲ, dʲ, lʲ].
[1]: 20-26 Although there exist minimal pairs between /o/ and /u/, some words show free variation between /u/ and /o/, and [o] is an allophone of /u/ in some environments.
Rogers (2020) hypothesizes that these patterns are a result of a diachronic sound change in progress and that /o u/ do not represent separate phonemes synchronically.
Noun phrases exhibit the word order possessor possessor-possessed, or noun-modifier.
Phrases which represent new, focused referents may be fronted to the start of a clause or sentence.
Possession is expressed by a prefix, with certain nonsingular possessors adding a separate suffix.
bows'uʔsiother-itse-PL-daj-COM.PLuʔsi -itse -dajother -PL -COM.PL'with others'The following sample paradigms illustrate the possessive morphemes – note the three-way clusivity distinction, differentiating both 1+2 (inclusive) and 1+3 (exclusive) as well as the case where the speaker, listener and other(s) are included (1+2+3), which Rogers (2020) refers to as 'unified'.
[1]: 42 There are nine attested case suffixes in Máku:[1]: 42-43 Ø-eneʔmu-siky3SG-brother-COM.SGØ-lukia3SG.SUBJ-be.oldØ-eneʔmu-siky Ø-lukia3SG-brother-COM.SG 3SG.SUBJ-be.old'with his older brother'uʔsi-itse-dajother-PL-COM.PLuʔsi-itse-dajother-PL-COM.PL'with others'adiata-leplace.below-LATadiata-leplace.below-LAT'downwards'waʔpite-kysky-TERMwaʔpite-kysky-TERM'up to the sky'waʔpite-leʔnisky-ABLwaʔpite-leʔnisky-ABL'from the sky'na-waʔniwater-ELAna-waʔniwater-ELA'on the water'waʔpite-ʔsasky-LOCwaʔpite-ʔsasky-LOC'in the sky'tse-watsi-wa1+2-mouth-INEtse-watsi-wa1+2-mouth-INE'in our [incl.]
'Máku verbs inflect for subject and direct object as well as tense, aspect, mood, evidentiality and negation.
The relative ordering of the TAME morphemes is also not well known due to lack of documentation, although tense and aspect suffixes are mutually exclusive.
While the tense boundaries are relative and not absolute, distant past is used just for mythological stories, and generally the distant future refers to events after the current day while the near future refers to events later in the day.
[1]: 80-83 Transitive active verbs can optionally take the additional negative suffix -bala following -ʔV.