Nivaclé language

Nivaclé is a Matacoan language spoken in Paraguay and by a couple hundred in Argentina. It is also known as Chulupí and Ashluslay, and in older sources has been called Ashluslé, Suhin, Sujín, Chunupí, Churupí, Choropí, and other variant spellings of these names. Nivaclé speakers are found in the Chaco, in Paraguay in Presidente Hayes Department, and Boquerón Department, and in Argentina in Salta Province.

Nivaclé is complex both in its phonology and morphology. Much of what is handled in syntactic constructions in many other languages is signalled in Nivaclé by its rich bound morphology and clitics. Nivaclé has several linguistic traits that are rare elsewhere in the world or even unique.

Its phonemic inventory has 21 consonants and 6 vowels, including glottalized (ejective) stops and affricates, and a unique phoneme, /k͡l/. Even within single syllables the Nivaclé consonant cluster /tš/ (orthographic <tsh>, IPA cluster /t+ʃ/) contrasts with the alveopalatal affricate /č/ (orthrographic <ch>, IPA /tʃ/), and the cluster /t+s/ contrasts with the alveolar affricate /ts/, both across morpheme boundaries and within single morphemes – this is unusual cross-linguistically. The basic word order (constituent order) is SVO (Subject-Verb-Object), or, in the different formulation used by some, AVO (A = subject of transitive verb or ‘agent’, V = verb, O = object of transitive verb), though other orders are possible in less neutral contexts. It also has the basic orders GN (Genitive-Noun, that is, possessor-possessed), NA (Noun-Adjective), and NP-Rel (Head Noun-Relative Clause). It has few adpositions (prepositions or postpositions); rather these relational and locative functions are signaled by a rich set of suffixes and clitics attached primarily to verbs, but also to other parts of speech; it also has some relational nouns (possessed noun constructions that function as adpositions). The co-occurrence in a language of the orders SVO, NA, GN, and NP-Rel is somewhat unusual for a language with SVO basic word order typology, where NG (Noun + Genitive) would be the expected order, rather than Nivaclé’s GN. SVO languages also tend to have Preposition-Noun order, too, though prepositions are mostly lacking in this language.

The main grammatical categories (parts of speech, lexical categories) of Nivaclé are noun, pronoun, demonstrative, adjective, adverb, and verb. There are significant syntactic and morphological differences in the behavior of several of these grammatical categories which distinguish them from similar categories in well-known European languages. Clitics are frequent in this language.