The Mẽbêngôkre language is currently spoken by two ethnic groups, the Kayapó and the Xikrin, which, besides sharing a language in common, both use the endonym Mẽbêngôkre (literally “those from the hole of the water”[3] "Although there are differences between the dialects spoken among the various ethnic groups, all recognize themselves as participants in a common culture.
41 The first historical records of the Mẽbêngôkre language and culture made by Westerners date back to the end of the 19th century, when the French explorer Henri Coudreau came in contact with the Mẽbêngôkre-speaking Irã'ãmrãnhre group.
Known authors of that period include Father Sebastião and Reverend Horace Banner, who lived among another Mẽbêngôkre (Kayapó) group known as Gorotire between 1937 and 1951.
[3] Although, “the Mebengokre [have been in] permanent contact with the surrounding non-indigenous population at various times, in most cases [there have been] catastrophic consequences.
Following such brutal experiences, some small groups refused to be approached by investigators and remain uncontacted around the Xingu and Curuá rivers.
Since the exploration period, academic linguists and anthropologists have investigated the Mẽbêngôkre and have successfully acquired a body of knowledge about this indigenous group.
Since the early writings on the grammar of Mẽbêngôkre by the Summer Institute of Linguistics missionaries Stout and Thomson (1974), multiple academic researchers have worked on the language, including Marília Ferreira,[7] Maria Amélia Reis Silva, Andrés Pablo Salanova, Lucivaldo Silva da Costa, and Edson de Freitas Gomes.
In some analyses, Mẽbêngôkre has five diphthongs which occur word-finally only: uwa /uᵊ/, ija /iᵊ/, eje /ɛᵊ/, ôwa /oᵊ/, ĩja /ĩᵊ/.
Complex onsets may by formed by a combination of one of /p b m k ŋ/ and one of /ɾ j/ (pr-, br-, mr-, kr-, ngr-, pj-, mj-, bj-, kj-, ngj-); /t n ɾ t͡ʃ d͡ʒ ɲ k ŋ kɾ ŋɾ/ can also combine with /w/ (tw-, nw-, rw-, xw-, djw-, nhw-, kw-, ngw-, krw-, ngrw-).
ArỳmAlreadynẽNFUTba1.NOMariPAUCi-tẽ-m1.ABS-go.SG-NFmã.DATArỳm nẽ ba ari i-tẽ-m mã.Already NFUT 1.NOM PAUC 1.ABS-go.SG-NF DAT‘We are leaving.’The ergative case marks the agent of a transitive verb in a nonfinite form and may cooccur with a nominative pronoun expressing the same participant.
The accusative case encodes the patient of monosyllabic transitive verbs compatible with overt nonfiniteness morphology in finite clauses.
ArỳmalreadynẽNFUTba1.NOMku-ma.3.ACC-listen/hear.FArỳm nẽ ba ku-ma.already NFUT 1.NOM 3.ACC-listen/hear.F‘I heard it already.’In Mẽbêngôkre, transitive verbs may be detransitivized by means of an anticausative or an antipassive derivation.
The combination of -ti and -re is used in a number of nouns which denote human collectives, such as Gorotire and Mẽtyktire (names of Mẽbêngôkre subdivisions).
In Mẽbêngôkre, many predicates appear to contain fossilized prefixes of different shapes (such as ka-, nhõ-, ku-, py-/pu-, ja-, dju-, nhĩ-), whose semantic contribution is not always straightforward.
[10]: 272 There are only several dozen of transitive verbs which take an accusative patient, all of which are monosyllabic[14]: 30–2 and have distinct finite and nonfinite forms.
This happens when a second-person agent acts over a third-person patient:[12]: 55–6 Ga2.NOMa-bĩ.2.ACC-kill.SG.FGa a-bĩ.2.NOM 2.ACC-kill.SG.F‘You killed it.’Mẽbêngôkre extensively uses the nouns djà ‘container’ and djwỳnh ‘owner, master’ to denote instruments (or locations) and prototypical agents, respectively, as in idjàkuru djà ‘eating utensils; eating place; food’ (literally ‘the container of my eating’) or pi’ôk jarẽnh djwỳnh ‘teacher’ (literally ‘the owner of the telling of the book’).
[14]: 88 In Mẽbêngôkre, there is no morphological distinction between present and past, the completion or continuation of an action is determined by the narrative context.
This interpretation has been variously described as “stative” or “subject-oriented” (in the sense that it ascribes a property to the subject, rather than focusing on the event itself) in the descriptive literature.”[16] Mẽbêngôkre has triadic kinship terms, which express at the same time the relation of a given referent both to the speaker and the addressee.
Examples include:[18]: 13 [5] NFUT:nonfuture tense:Nonfuture tense PAUC:paucal number:Paucal number INT:interrogative particle:Interrogative particle F:finite verb:Finite verb