It has about 2,700 speakers, also called Wariʼ, who live along tributaries of the Pacaas Novos river in Western Brazil.

There are some sounds not listed which are only used in onomatopoeia and can violate the usual phonotactic and phonological constraints.

The Oro Nao dialect of Wariʼ as described by Everett & Kern (1997) has the following consonant phonemes.

The following diphthongs occur in the Oro Nao dialect: [ẽĩ], [ãĩ], [aɪ], [õĩ], [oɪ], [ỹĩ], [ĩõ], [ẽõ], [ãõ].

These have been analysed as single sounds, but apparently only to avoid complicating syllable structure.

Loss of this initial syllable is a potential explanation of why these words have variants that break the phonotactic rules.

Wariʼ is a largely analytic language, which has almost no verbal inflection but many derivational processes.

For example, to convey the meaning 'his bone or leg', the xiʼ form of the noun (araxiʼ) with the third person masculine singular ending must be used.

The nonpossessed form of the noun ('at) cannot be used with the third person masculine singular nominal inflectional clitic.

Plural forms are derived by partial reduplication of the CV from the stressed syllable.

A CVrV pattern is usually used for intransitive verbs: cat 'break' (intr), caracat 'break' (plural).

Wariʼ has both verbal and nominal inflectional clitics, which are analysed as such and not affixes for a few reasons.

Verbal inflectional clitics can occur as whole utterances as responses, as the referent is clear from the previous statement.

This happens when xiʼ nouns with stems that end in -ji inflect for third person masculine or feminine, as the /k/ in the suffix causes the /y/ in the stem to become /ts/: taraji-ear+ -con3S.M= taraxiconhis eartaraji- + -con = taraxiconear {} 3S.M {} {his ear}Progressive assimilation occurs over morpheme boundaries between nasal consonants or diphthongs and voiceless stops.

Coalescence is the most common assimilatory process, which is often accompanied by regressive vowel harmony.

For a sentence to be a COMP sentence, it must have a COMP word in the initial position, an inflectional morpheme closely following which gives information about tense, mood, and sometimes gender, and a tenseless verbal inflectional clitic following the verb.

[17]Cain'COMPcaINFL:NRPPtomi'speakcama?3S.FCain' ca tomi' cama?COMP INFL:NRPP speak 3S.F'What did she say?'

[18]Tomi'speakxaxa'distractedly'urut1P.EXCL:RPPpainCOMPcaINFL:NRPPcono'die:Pcacama3P.Fxuruxutsiblings-1P.EXCLpane.REM:PASTTomi' xaxa' 'urut pain ca cono' cacama xuruxut pane.speak distractedly 1P.EXCL:RPP COMP INFL:NRPP die:P 3P.F siblings-1P.EXCL REM:PAST'We are sad because our brothers died.'

(Definite) [22]RPP:realis past/present MF:masculine or feminine INFL:inflection S:subject EMPH:emphasis COMP:complementizer