The language names are also spelled Kapixana, Kapixanã, and Canoé, the last shared with Awa-Canoeiro.
The Kanoê people, although disperse in the southeastern part of the state of Rondônia, live mainly along the Guaporé River.
[4] Price (1978) proposes a relationship with the Nambikwaran languages,[5] while Kaufman (1994, 2007) suggests that Kunza is related.
[6][7] Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with Kwaza, Aikanã, and the Nambikwaran languages due to contact.
[9]: 659 The main population, living by Guaporé River, share the land with other indigenous people and have a long history of cohabitation with the "white man".
Most of them have been assimilated into mainstream Brazilian society and are married to people belonging to other indigenous groups.
By the Omerê River, a single family of Kanoê can be found, with much less influence from the Brazilian society.
Having fled into a forest reserve, this group is considered an isolated indigenous people, only allowing outside contact in 1995 after many years of attempts by the Ethno Environmental Protection Front.
The area by the Omerê River is believed to be the original territory of the Kanoê people by Victor Dequech (1942) and Etta Becker-Donner (1955).
Various proposals were advanced on little evidence; Price (1978) for example thought Kanoê might be one of the Nambikwaran languages.
[14] And in 1998 a paper on the negation and litotes of the language was published by Bacelar and Augusto Silva Júnior.
[15] Since then, Laércio Bacelar has been the main linguist investigating the language and working alongside the Kanoê people.
[16] A project called Etnografia e Documentação da Lingua Kanoé is underway with a lexicographic and ethnographic approach to record auditory and written data of the Kanoê language.
The project is currently coordinated by Laércio Nora Bacelar, a Brazilian linguist, and is funded by FUNAI - Museu do Índio and by UNESCO.
Maximally complex syllable is CGVG, where G is a glide /j w/, or, due to epenthesis in certain morphological situations or to elision, the final consonant may be /m n/.
It is also primarily an agglutinative language, and many words are formed by simple roots, juxtaposition and suffixation.
[16] Personal pronouns in the Kanoê language follow a monomorphic free form in the singular and bimorphic in the plural.
In example b. the transitive verb {vara-} "speak" takes a subject, pja e "your woman", which the morpheme {-ro} attaches as the subject of the verbal action; and an object, ña kani "my child", which the morpheme {-to} attaches as the object of the verbal action.
It is presumed that the quantifier arakere is formed by a litotes mechanism and that its internal structure follows {ara-} "few" + {-k} 'NEG' + {-e} 'DECL' + {-re} 'AUX'.
"He has not few brothers")The quantifier arakere can also be used together with numerals to change its meaning to "few": minitodayaj1SG[mow-mowtwo-twoara k-efew-NEG-NMZmapi]arrowõ-tsi1-havemo-e-reAPL-DECL-AUXmini aj [mow-mow {ara k-e} mapi] õ-tsi mo-e-retoday 1SG two-two few-NEG-NMZ arrow 1-have APL-DECL-AUX"Today I have only four arrows.