However, it may be threatened by the presence of a newly installed radar station staffed by a considerable number of non-Indigenous people close to the main village.

[4] The modern Tiriyó is formed from various different Indigenous communities; some of these, such as the Aramixó, are mentioned in European writings as early as 1609–1610.

[2] As such, the Tiriyó established contact relatively early with runaway slave groups that settled in the area around the end of the 18th century.

They maintained regular commercial relations with one group, the Ndyuka, and for many years they were the only contact the Tiriyó had with foreign populations.

[2] These missions tried to concentrate the Tiriyó population in larger villages to more easily convert them to Christianity, and over time, other Indigenous groups such as the Akuriyó joined them here.

[2] Tiriyó has been classified as belonging to the Taranoan group of the Guianan sub-branch of Cariban, together with Karihona (Carijona), in Colombia, and Akuriyó, in Suriname, the former with a few, and the latter with apparently no, speakers left.

The first wordlist of Tiriyó was compiled by Jules Crevaux in 1882, consisting of 31 entries including two sentences in Ndyuka-Tiriyó, a pidgin language.

[2] In 1909, Claudius Henricus De Goeje wrote a short grammar of Tiriyó alongside a longer wordlist of around 500 entries that he had published previously in 1904.

It also provides a list of words commonly borrowed into Tiriyó, and a preliminary English-Tiriyó dictionary.

[9] Tiriyó has been partially documented as part of Meira's research with the Leiden University, in conjunction with the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

[10] Meira's documentation included specific focus on stress patterns, contrastive demonstratives, and locative postpositions.

[10] There have been relatively few ethnographic studies on the Tiriyó, with the exception of the works by missionary Protasio Frikel and English anthropologist Peter Rivière.

Phonetically: Examples (acute accents mark stress, and colons length): Note that some words apparently follow the opposite - trochaic - pattern (e.g., /meekane/ above).

Cognate words from related languages provide evidence for this analysis: compare the Tiriyó stem /eeka/ 'bite' with e.g. Waiwai, Katxuyana, Hixkaryana /eska/, Panare /ehka/, Karihona /eseka/, suggesting a historical process of syllable reduction with subsequent compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel.

On verbs, it usually marks iteration or repetition (e.g.: wïtëe 'I go, I am going', wïtë-wïtëe 'I keep going, I always go, I go again and again'); on nouns and adverbials, several examples of an entity, or several instances of a phenomenon (e.g.: kutuma 'painful', kuu-kuutuma 'painful all over, feeling pain all over one's body'; sikinman '(something) black', siki-sikiman-ton 'a number of black things' (including also the plural marker -ton; see below).

There are two general morphophonological processes that have important effects on the shapes of Tiriyó morphemes: syllable reduction and ablaut.

These morphemes will typically have: The table below illustrates the various grades of the verb stems pono(pï) 'to tell O' and ona(mï) 'to bury, hide O'.

The full form occurs when the following material (affix, stem, clitic) has a consonant cluster, i.e. is CCV-initial (the first consonant resyllabifies as the coda of the reducing syllable), or then starts with r. The reduced forms occur when this is not the case: the coda grade when a possible cluster - mp, nt, nk, ns, hp, hk, ht - results, and the length grade in the other cases (the zero grade for verb stems, when no clitics follow).

Historically, syllable reduction results from the weakening and loss of the high vowels ï and u, leading to the formation of consonant clusters, in which the first element typically 'debuccalizes' to a glottal element (h or ʔ) and later disappears, causing (when possible) the compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel (cf.

Comparative evidence suggests that many, perhaps all, morpheme-internal clusters in the Cariban family were formed as a result of this process.

They mark for past, present, and future tense, as well as for certainty, doubt, and non-factual, hypothetical, incredulative, and admonative statements.

The first-person pronoun, wɨ(ɨ), is unique in that it has a long vowel sound that is only heard if a clitic particle follows; as well, it does not have a derived collective form (instead, kɨmɛnjamo and anja are used).

The unclassified nouns are a small group: arɨ (“leaf, contents”); eperu (“fruit”); epɨ (“tree, plant”); enɨ (“container”); jo(mɨ) (“wrapping”); po (“clothes”).

Other nouns that are optionally possessible include relational terms, manufactured items, and plant names.

The case marking patterns of Tiriyó are no exception to this, as they vary considerably and “almost every possible combination of participants is instantiated in some construction”—the best way to describe the language is thus to say that Tiriyo is a complicated ‘split-participant’ system.

[2] The first example below shows the marking of the transitive subject and the second shows the lack of marking of an intransitive subject: kaikuiJaguari_jomi3-voice:POSt-ɛta-eREM-hear-REMmeri_jasquirrel.sp_AGTkaikui i_jomi t-ɛta-e meri_jaJaguar 3-voice:POS REM-hear-REM squirrel.sp_AGT‘The squirrel heard the jaguar’s voice.’t-eetainka-eREM:SA-run-REMpaitapirt-eetainka-e paiREM:SA-run-REM tapir'The tapir ran (away).

'Nominative patterns are also found throughout the language; notable examples are object-verb order sentences when the transitive subject or object are in third person, negative, supine, and habitual past form phrases.

irɛmao3.INAN.ANAPH_TEMPjehkehpo1-hammock:POS_LOCwahkɛn1.SA-COP-PST.IPFVkurewellirɛmao jehkehpo wahkɛn kure3.INAN.ANAPH_TEMP 1-hammock:POS_LOC 1.SA-COP-PST.IPFV well‘I stayed/used to stay a long time in my hammock, feeling well.’muremenkɛrɛchild_ATTR_stillwɨ1ahtaowhenkutumaa.lotemaminaeplay-PST.HABwɨ1muremenkɛrɛ wɨ ahtao kutuma emaminae wɨchild_ATTR_still 1 when a.lot play-PST.HAB 1‘When I was still a child, I used to play a lot.’The present imperfective (-(ja)-e, -(ja)-(nɛ)) is used to express ongoing progressive, habitual, or typical actions, as well as “general truths”.

[2] nehtan3.A.O-come-FUT-IPFV-DBTkonoporainnehtan konopo3.A.O-come-FUT-IPFV-DBT rain'The rain will come'It is important to note that the certainty and doubt forms do not express the source of the information; that is to say, they are not evidentials.

AGT:agent CTY:certainty DBT:doubt INV:invisible NPOS:non-possessed POS:possessed PX:proximal RPT:repetition