Madí—also known as Jamamadí after one of its dialects, and also Kapaná or Kanamanti (Canamanti)—is an Arawan language spoken by about 1,000 Jamamadi, Banawá, and Jarawara people scattered over Amazonas, Brazil.

The language has an active–stative clause structure with an agent–object–verb or object–agent–verb word order, depending on whether the agent or object is the topic of discussion (AOV appears to be the default).

[2] Madí (meaning simply "people") has three extant dialects, corresponding to three distinct tribal groups.

Dixon characterizes Jarawara and Banawá as somewhat closer to each other than either is to Jamamadí, analogous to the standard British, Australian and American varieties of English.

Madí has a relatively small phonemic inventory, distinguishing four vowel qualities and twelve consonants.

[4] All vowel qualities may occur short or long, but the distinction is fairly limited and has a low functional load.

In polysyllabic words, however, vowel length is occasionally contrastive, as shown in the minimal pair /ˈaba/ "fish" and /ˈaːba/ "to be finished, dead".

Many instances of long vowels developed historically from the loss of /h/ preceding an unstressed syllable, a process that is still ongoing; for example, the citation form /ˈɸaha/ "water" may be pronounced /ɸaː/ in casual speech.

In the Jarawara dialect, stress is assigned to every second mora counting from the end of the phonological word, beginning with the penultimate, e.g. /ˌkaraˈɸato/ "tape recorder".

The basis for written representation of the language today, both among native and non-native speakers, is a practical orthography devised by SIL for the Jamamadí dialect.

This article, which focuses mostly on the Jarawara dialect, will henceforth use Dixon's practical orthography even when discussing Jamamadí and Banawá.

The Jarawara sentence below provides an example of a highly inflected verb, with six affixes corresponding to eight independent words in English (lexical roots are highlighted in bold): [5] katomatemperka-ki-joma-me-mata-mona-kaAPPLIC-in.motion-THROUGH.GAP-BACK-FAR.PAST/NON-EYEWITNESS-REPORTED-DECLARATIVEkatoma ka-ki-joma-me-mata-mona-katemper APPLIC-in.motion-THROUGH.GAP-BACK-FAR.PAST/NON-EYEWITNESS-REPORTED-DECLARATIVE"He is said to have gone back in angrily."

Madí displays a "fluid-S" active-stative alignment system[6] and a basic object-subject-verb (OSV) word order.

However, the precise delineation of a "single verb" is difficult, since certain grammatically bound inflections can nonetheless form independent phonological words.

For this reason, Dixon prefers to analyse Madí in terms of "predicates" and "copulas" - sentence-level grammatical units which includes the verb root, personal pronouns in any position, and inflectional affixes, but excludes noun phrases.

For some intransitive verbs the applicative, in its prototypical linguistic function, adds a degree of valency and turns a peripheral argument into a core object (O); for example, the sentence jomee habo naka owa ni-jaa "the dog (S) barks at me (periph.)"

However, there are many instances in which the applicative does not necessarily perform this syntactic role, and instead signals some semantic function (e.g. when the subject S is a sick person or a full container).

However, the sentence in question was made in reference to a photograph, indicating a semantic rule that an ordinarily non-inflecting verb can take inflection without an auxiliary if it describes a statement of timeless fact, rather than an ongoing event.

These are indicative (divided into declarative and "backgrounding"; both optional), imperative (marked for proximity and positive vs. negative, for a total of four), interrogative (content, polar, and polar-future), as well as several single suffixes relating to a narrative (e.g. a climactic sentence).

In general, these suffixes can combine with one another freely, although multiple subgroups exist whose members appear to be mutually exclusive.

If the subject of the copula is a prefixed first- or second-person singular o- / ti-, moreover, this will attach to the negative -ra rather than the verb itself: ama ti-ra-haa "is it not you?"

The only affix which can apply to a noun is the accusative suffix -ra, which is essentially extinct in Jarawara (although still common in Jamamadí and Banawá); a remnant of this can be seen, however, in the non-singular object pronouns era, otara, tera, mera.