Paumarí (also Paumari, Purupuru, Kurukuru, Pamari, Purupurú, Pammari, Curucuru, Palmari) is an Arauan language spoken in Brazil by about 300 older adults out of an ethnic population of 900.
Speakers of Arawan languages, particularly Paumarí (who have had the most contact with non-natives) are beginning to speak Portuguese.
[2] Out of the Paumarí group that inhabits the Tapauá River, the youth, which makes up nearly a majority of the population, spoke only Portuguese in 1964.
However, it also has numerous closed classes including fourteen adjectives, adpositions, interjections, conjunctions and demonstratives.
Paumarí has iambic feet, which means the accent tends towards the right, or latter, portion of the word or syllable set, and they are not weight-sensitive.
Everett theorizes that stress placement and syllables in the Paumarí language are more exclusive from one another than many modern theories believe.
Primary stress is characterized by a sharp increase in intensity (volume) and by somewhat higher pitch, although the latter is difficult for non-speakers to distinguish and was found by digital analysis of sound wave of native speakers.
There exist affixes, mainly suffixes, to denote gender, number, and noun classes in verbs.
In either case, the verb takes the suffix -hi for feminine agreement and -ha for masculine agreement: adaDEM(M)ojoro-aturtle(M)-ERGbi-kamitha-'i-hi3SG.TR-hear-ASP-TH.FEM.AGRidaDEM(F)sinariburiti(F)bono-nifruit(F)-FEM.POSSada ojoro-a bi-kamitha-'i-hi ida sinari bono-niDEM(M) turtle(M)-ERG 3SG.TR-hear-ASP-TH.FEM.AGR DEM(F) buriti(F) fruit(F)-FEM.POSS'This turtle heard the buriti fruit (fall).
This system of classifying nouns is eroding in the face of contact with Portuguese, with the agreement prefix often being left off of verbs in rapid speech.
In transitive phrases, the word order is mainly SVO, in which the ergative case marking system tends to be used.
The affix used for ergative marking is the suffix -a, and the object of the sentence is preceded by a word denoting a demonstrative case.
In these cases, it is thought that the accusative system has taken over, as the subject of the sentence no longer receives the ergative suffix -a and is free to occur at the beginning or end of the phrase (but not directly before the verb).
At the time of the 1964 SIL arrival, they used the Portuguese word mais ("more") in conjunction with adjectives to compare things and the researchers could not find anything in native Paumarí tongue that served the same function in their language.