The Xavante language is unusual in its phonology, its ergative object–agent–verb word order, and its use of honorary and endearment terms in its morphology.
The current speakers, made up of all ages, use the language vigorously and hold positive attitudes towards Xavante.
[2] Xavante is a language in the Jê family, spoken in Mato Grosso, in the west part of Brazil.
[3] It has been orthographically rendered as Chavante and Shavante, and is also called Akuen, Akwen, A’uwe Uptabi, A’we, Crisca, Pusciti, and Tapuac.
[6] Following this, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, groups of indigenous people, now distinctly self-identifying as Xavante, settled in Mato Grosso; this area was relatively undisturbed until the 1930s.
[7] At this point, the government under Getúlio Vargas initiated the ‘March to the West’ campaign within the National Integration Program, in which expansion to the interior of Brazil and ‘domestication of the Savage’ were heavily promoted.
[7] The people were transferred from Mato Grosso to southern Brazil, a less fertile region; however, the Xavante people then began the attempt to recover the land they had lived on prior to contact with settlers in the 1970s, with demands for territory being met with violence by large capitalist companies that now had hold of the areas.
[10] This stock is spoken in a wide distribution of non-central Brazil; Macro-Gê is also popular in the eastern, northern, and central, and southwestern parts of the country, as well as being distributed in nearby Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina, but the Jê family is its only remaining large subgroup, with other languages remaining in isolates due to extinction.
[11][12] In the 20th century, Xavante has been studied academically since the 1960s by both Brazilian and foreign linguists, starting with a grammar;[13] papers from this period examined the language’s phonemes,[14] syllable structure,[15] as well as aspect and acquisition.
Since the 1990s, more specific properties of the language have been researched academically, namely with respect to acquisition,[19][20] name agreement,[21] assimilation,[22] morphology, and respect/intimacy relationships.
The phonetic realizations of these phonemes include those shown in the following chart: (/j/ varies between obstruent and sonorant, alveolar and palatal.)
[23] For example, morphology reflects honorific status, in that morphemes are used to denote relationships of intimacy and kinship.
Similarly, social positions and situations of individuals are marked using morphological constructions; for instance, a’ama, a group of Xavante men trained in new forms of pre-existing words, are referred to by other members of the clan using a specific set of morphological forms.
Xavante also uses a reflexive prefix, tsi-, in situations requiring this grammatical construction to be denoted; for instance, ʔmadə (to look at) becomes tsi-ʔmadə (to look at oneself).
This is particularly reflected in familial connections; a child must use the respectful grammatical forms when growing older in reference to their parents and grandparents, and are scolded if they do not do so (Harrison 2001).
For example, the morpheme a is added to refer to a second person singular; a boy asking his grandfather to give a favor to his grandmother is generated thus: Ï1SG'radaregr.father.ENDRãhãhereõmetherea-te2.RES-LTRsãræ-reput.down-DIMnaIMPapâsilaterda-teGEN-LTRråneeatdaPURPÏ 'radare ãhã õme a-te sãræ-re na apâsi da-te råne da1SG gr.father.ENDR here there 2.RES-LTR put.down-DIM IMP later GEN-LTR eat PURP"Grandfather, here, put this over there for (grandmother) to eat later.
Finally, a couple that has been arranged to be married also enter a specific relationship, known as dasiwasini, and must use grammatical forms denoting respect.
By extension, the language uses morphology in general to conceptualize a variety of concepts, including closeness in relationships as well as personal prefixes.
Particles in the language depend on whether it is in the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person; whether the referent is in the subject, object, possessor, or complement position; and if the predicate is a noun (nominal) or a verb (verbal).
"Xavante also uses a person-marking system, in which subjects and objects are marked differently depending on a number of criteria.
"When using the dual first person as an object, however, a different morpheme, ʔĩwa, is attached to the main verb: ∅2bãPERFtePOTʔĩwa-tsa1-bite∅ bã te ʔĩwa-tsa2 PERF POT 1-bite"Thou bit both of us.
In the first case, when "both" is implied, ʔwa alone is used at the end of the clause, with the reduplicated ʔwaʔwa occurring earlier as follows: ʔwa2dõrĩNSʔwaʔwaDUhãEMPbĩtsionepeʔafish∅2tePOTʔĭ-rẽ-dĕ3-eat-NZʔwaDUʔwa dõrĩ ʔwaʔwa hã bĩtsi peʔa ∅ te ʔĭ-rẽ-dĕ ʔwa2 NS DU EMP one fish 2 POT 3-eat-NZ DU"Ye (both) eat one fish.
"Finally, third person dual is also denoted similarly depending on whether the argument is in the subject or object position.
"However, when the third person dual is in the object position, the same morpheme, dzahurɛ, is also used, as in the following example: ʔõ3dõrĩNShãEMP∅3tePOTdzaPROJ∅-ʔatsabrõ3-rundzahurɛDUʔõ dõrĩ hã ∅ te dza ∅-ʔatsabrõ dzahurɛ3 NS EMP 3 POT PROJ 3-run DU"Both of them will run.
"However, the second person plural is expressed differently, with the previous morpheme, dzaʔra, being combined with ʔwaʔwa in two positions, clause-medially after the initial person marker and clause-finally, as here: ʔa2dõrĩNSʔwaʔwaDUʔaj-rare2-smalldzaʔraPLʔwaʔwaDUʔa dõrĩ ʔwaʔwa ʔaj-rare dzaʔra ʔwaʔwa2 NS DU 2-small PL DU"They are all small.
"In all, the plural in Xavante is expressed with less variation than in the dual, but nonetheless is always important to marking quantity of human subjects in the first, second, and third person.