The Pekodian languages are a subgroup of the
Cariban language family. The languages are spoken in
Mato Grosso and
Pará states of Brazil and make up the southernmost branch of Cariban.[1]
Meira and Chousou-Polydouri (2015) consider Pekodian to have descended from Cariban migrations that came from the north, as Cariban linguistic diversity is concentrated in northern South America.[2]
The term Pekodian was coined in 2005 by Meira and Bruna Franchetto on the basis of a cognate word for ‘woman’ found in these languages, respectively Bakairi pekodo and Ikpeng petkom, but not found in any of the other Cariban languages compared against them.[3]
The term Kampot is coined by Carvalho (2020) from the
lexical innovation *kampot ‘fire’ defining the dialect cluster.
Sound changes
A number of sound changes are shared between Bakairí and Ikpeng:[3]
In
intervocalic position,
Proto-Cariban *p becomes w, *t becomes d (further developing to r in Ikpeng), and *k becomes g.
Proto-Cariban *r becomes l in certain (as-yet undetermined) shared environments.
Proto-Cariban *w becomes p word-initially (though there are some exceptions in Ikpeng).
Proto-Cariban *t
palatalizes to tʃ before e and i. (Bakairí further develops tʃ to ʃ, ʒ, s, or z.)
Possibly, the Proto-Cariban sequence *nu-ru reduced to *n-ru, yielding Bakairí nu and Ikpeng ŋ-ru, although these results can also be explained in other ways.
Loanwords
Pekodian languages have various loanwords from non-Cariban languages, including
Juruna and
Arawakan languages.[1]
Pekodian may have also influenced
Bororoan and other non-Cariban language families.
^
abMeira, Sérgio and Bruna Franchetto. 2005. “The southern Cariban languages and the Cariban family.” in International Journal of American Linguistics 71, pages 127-192.
^Gildea, Spike. 2012. "Linguistic studies in the Cariban family", in Campbell & Grondona, eds, The Indigenous Languages of South America: A Comprehensive Guide. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.