Moxo (also known as Mojo, pronounced 'Moho') is a subgroup of the Arawakan languages spoken by the Moxo people of the Llanos de Moxos in northeastern Bolivia. The two extant languages of the Moxo people, Trinitario and Ignaciano, are as distinct from one another as they are from neighboring Arawakan languages. The extinct Magiana was also distinct.
The Moxo languages have an active–stative syntax.Aikhenvald, "Arawak", in Dixon & Aikhenvald, eds., The Amazonian Languages, 1999. They are both National Languages of Bolivia.
Sociolinguistic background The languages belong to a group of tribes that originally ranged through the upper Mamoré, extending east and west from the Guapure (Itenes) to the Beni, and are now centered in the Province of Moxos, Department of Beni, Bolivia.https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10606b.htm , New Advent, Moxos Indians, Retrieved February 10, 2011. They form part of the Mamoré-Guaporé linguistic area.Muysken, Pieter; Hammarström, Harald; Birchall, Joshua; Van Gijn, Rik; Krasnoukhova, Olga; Müller, Neele (2014). Linguistic areas: bottom-up or top-down? The case of the Guaporé-Mamoré . In: Comrie, Bernard; Golluscio, Lucia. Language Contact and Documentation / Contacto lingüístico y documentación. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 205-238.
Moxo was also the primary lingua franca () used in the Jesuit Missions of Moxos.Crevels, Mily. 2002. Speakers shift and languages die: An account of language death in Amazonian Bolivia. In Mily Crevels, Simon van de Kerke, Sérgio Meira & Hein van der Voort (eds.), Current Studies on South American Languages [Indigenous Languages of Latin America, 3], p. 9-30. Leiden: Research School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies (CNWS).
Classification The Moxo languages are most closely related to Bauré, Pauna, and Paikoneka. Together, they form the Mamoré-Guaporé languages (named after the Mamoré River and Guaporé River).
Jolkesky (2016) Classification by Jolkesky (2016):Jolkesky, Marcelo. 2016. Uma reconstrução do proto-mamoré-guaporé (família arawák). LIAMES 16: 7-37.
Mamoré-Guaporé languages Bauré Bauré Carmelito Joaquiniano Muxojeóne Moxeno Ignaciano Trinitário Loretano Javierano Paikoneka Paikoneka Paunaka Paunaka
Danielsen (2011) Classification by Danielsen (2011) and Danielsen & Terhart (2014: 226):Danielsen, Swintha (2011). The personal paradigms in Baure and other South Arawakan languages. In Antoine Guillaume; Françoise Rose (eds.). International Journal of American Linguistics 77(4): 495-520.Danielsen, Swintha; Terhart, Lena (2014). Paunaka. In Mily Crevels; Pieter Muysken (eds.). Lenguas de Bolivia, vol. III: Oriente, pp. 221-258. La Paz: Plural Editores.
Baure languages Bauré Carmelito Joaquiniano Pauna languages Paunaka Paikoneka Mojo languages Trinitário Ignaciano Loretano Javierano Muchojeone
Vocabulary Magíana word list from the late 1700s published in Palau and Saiz (1989):
{| class="wikitable" ! Spanish gloss !! English gloss !! Magíana |- | bueno || good || chimaré |- | malo || bad || mononeparé |- | el padre || father || nuuhá |- | la madre || mother || nuuhéno |- | el hermano || brother || nuuhamí |- | uno || one || piyochó |- | dos || two || tonocovó |- | tres || three || mopoicovó
No words were recorded for numerals higher than 3.
Further reading Carvalho, Fernando O. de; Françoise Rose. Comparative reconstruction of Proto-Mojeño and the phonological diversification of Mojeño dialects. LIAMES, Campinas, v. 18, n. 1, p. 3–44, Jan./Jun. 2018. Key, Mary Ritchie. 2015. Ignaciano dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Gill, Ruth, and Wayne Gill. 2015. Trinitario dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
References
External links
Ignaciano (Intercontinental Dictionary Series) Trinitario (Intercontinental Dictionary Series) Mojeño Trinitario DoReCo corpus compiled by Françoise Rose. Audio recordings of narrative texts with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level, translations, and - for some texts - time-aligned morphological annotations.