Grammatical characteristics

Diversity rather than common traits characterizes the grammar of South American Indian languages. Features commonly encountered seem to reflect facts of frequency in general typology rather than traits specific to this area. The greatest number of languages are probably suffixing languages like Quechumaran and Huitotoan, or use many suffixes and some prefixes like Arawakan and Panoan. Also very numerous are those languages having few prefixes and suffixes, such as Ge, Carib, or Tupian. Languages employing only prefixes to show grammatical distinctions have not been reported. There are a few with many prefixes but still more suffixes (Jebero, or Chébero); others, like Ona and Tehuelche, with almost no affixing, are also rare.

Similarly, the complexity of words varies a great deal. In Guaraní words with three components and in Piro (Arawakan) words with six elements are of average complexity for the respective languages. In languages like the Cariban or Tupian ones, word roots are nominal (nouns) or verbal (verbs) and may be converted into the other class by derivational affixes; in languages like Quechua or Araucanian, many word roots are both nominal and verbal. Languages like Yuracare form many words by reduplication (the repetition of a word or a part of a word), a process that does not occur systematically in the Tupian languages. Compounding, the joining of two or more words to form new words, is a very widespread type of word formation, but it can be nearly absent, as in the Chon languages. Verb stems in which the nominal (noun) object is incorporated are also rather frequent. Many languages are of the agglutinative type (Quechuan, Panoan, Araucanian); i.e., they combine several elements of distinctive meaning into a single word without changing the element. Others (Cariban, Tupian) show a moderate amount of change and fusion of the elements when combined in words.

Grammatically marked gender in nouns occurs in Guaycuruan (Guaicuruan), and a difference in masculine and feminine gender in the verb occurs in Arawakan, Huitotoan (Witotoan), and Tucanoan, but genderless languages are more common. Singular and plural in the 3rd person (“he, she, it”) is not obligatorily distinguished in Tupian and Cariban, but languages like Yámana and Araucanian have singular, dual, and plural. A very common distinction is that between inclusive 1st person (“you and I,” hearer included) and exclusive 1st person (“he and I,” hearer excluded). Pronominal forms differentiated according to categories that indicate whether the person is present or absent, sitting or standing, and so forth occur in Guaycuruan languages and Movima. Case relations in nouns are generally expressed by suffixes or postpositions; the use of prepositions is rare. Possession is indicated predominantly by prefixes or suffixes, and systems in which possessive forms are the same as those used as the subject of intransitive verbs and as the object of transitive ones are rather common. Classificatory affixes that subclassify nouns according to the shape of the object occur in the Chibchan, Tucanoan, and Waican groups.

Very frequently the verbal forms express the subject, object, and negation in the same word. The categories of tense and aspect seem to be about evenly represented in South American languages, but the specific categories expressed vary a great deal from language to language: Aguaruna (Jívaroan) has a future form and three past forms differentiated as to relative remoteness, while in Guaraní the difference is basically between future and nonfuture. Other languages like Jebero express fundamentally modal categories. Very common are affixes indicating movement, chiefly toward and away from the speaker, and location (e.g., in Quechumaran, Záparo, Itonama), and in some stocks like Arawakan and Panoan there are many suffixes in the verb with very concrete adverbial meaning, such as “by night,” “during the day.” Classificatory affixes indicating the way the action is performed—by biting, striking, walking—occur in Jebero and Tikuna (Ticuna). Actions done individually or collectively are differentiated paradigmatically in Carib, while in Yámana and Jívaro different verbal stems are used according to whether the subject or the object is singular or plural. There are also various languages (Guaycuruan, Wichí, Cocama) in which some words have different forms according to the sex of the speaker.

Equational sentences are very common. These are formed by juxtaposing two nominal expressions (nouns) without a linking verb, a fact that usually correlates with the absence of a verb “be” for expressing identification or location (e.g., “John good man,” “my house there”). Sentences in which the predicate is a noun inflected like a verb with the meaning “being” or “having” that thing designated by the noun also occur in Bororo and Huitoto (Witoto); e.g., “I–knife” = “I have a knife.” Sentences in which the subject is the undergoer of the action are frequent, but true passive sentences in which the undergoer and the agent are expressed are rare, though they do occur in Huitoto. Subordinate sentences are rarely introduced by conjunctions; subordination is usually expressed by postposed elements or special forms of the verbs such as gerunds, participles, or subordinate conjugations.

Phonological characteristics

As in grammar, there are no phonological features common to all South American languages that would be specific to them alone. The number of distinctive sounds (phonemes) may vary from 42 in Jaqaru (Quechumaran) to 17 in Campa (Arawakan). Jaqaru has 36 consonants, while Makushí (Cariban) has 11; some Quechuan languages have only three vowels, whereas Apinayé (Macro-Ge) has ten oral vowels and seven nasal ones. A dialect of Tucano (Tucanoan) exhibits three contrasting points of articulation, while Chipaya (Macro-Mayan) has nine. Many types of contrasting sounds occur although not with equal frequency. Voiceless stops (e.g., p, t, k) occur everywhere, but voiced stops (e.g., b, d, g) may be absent, and fricatives (e.g., f, v, s, z) may be few in number. Glottalized voiceless stops—consonants made with simultaneous closure of the glottis and without vibration of the vocal cords—are rather common (Quechumaran, Chibchan), but not glottalized voiced stops (in which the vocal cords vibrate). Also less frequent are aspirated (Quechumaran) and palatalized sounds (Puinave); glottalized nasal sounds (Movima) and voiceless laterals (l-like sounds, as in Vilela) are rare. A distinction between velar and postvelar sounds occurs in Quechumaran and Chon, between velar and labiovelar in Tacana and Siona (Sioni); palatal retroflex consonants, made with the tip of the tongue turned up touching the palate, occur in Pano-Tacanan and Chipaya.

Systems with nasal vowels are common (Macro-Ge, Sabelan), but in several languages (Tupian, Waican) nasalization is a feature not of vowels and consonants but of whole words. There is an apparent absence of front rounded vowels (ü, ö), but central or back unrounded vowels (ɨ, ï) are common. Systems with long vowels occur in Chipaya and some Cariban languages, and glottalized vowels occur in Tikuna and Chon languages. Very common are pitch-stress systems with high and low tones on stressed syllables; e.g., in Panoan, Huitotoan, and Chibchan. More complex systems with three tones as in Acaricuara, four as in Mundurukú (Mundurucú), and five as in Tikuna are rare. Syllables are generally without complex consonant clusters.

The typology proposed by Tadeusz Milewski, a Polish linguist, classifies American Indian languages into three types: (1) Atlantic, with few oral consonants but complex systems of nasal consonants, and oral and nasal vowels, of which the Ge languages would be typical; (2) Pacific, with complex systems of oral consonants (many contrasting points and modes of articulation) but with few nasal consonants and few vowels, as exemplified by Quechumaran; and (3) Central, with consonant systems more like the Pacific type and vowel systems like the Atlantic, of which Chibcha would be typical. The typology is probably too gross to accommodate meaningfully every language type found in South America, but it holds to a certain extent, especially for the Atlantic type (Macro-Ge, Tupian, and Cariban).