Kaufman (1990) provisionally classified Guató as a branch of the Macro-Jê languages, but no evidence for this was found by Eduardo Ribeiro. Martins (2011) also suggests a relationship with Macro-Jê.[3]
Language contact
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Bororo, Tupi, and Karib language families due to contact.[4]
An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)[5] found lexical similarities between Guató and the Zamucoan languages. However, since the analysis was automatically generated, the grouping could be either due to mutual lexical borrowing, genetic inheritance, or chance resemblances.
Distribution
Today, Guató is spoken in Guató Indigenous Territory and Baía dos Guató Indigenous Territory.[6]
^Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013. ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013).
^Epps, Patience; Michael, Lev, eds. (2023). Amazonian Languages: Language Isolates. Volume I: Aikanã to Kandozi-Chapra. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN978-3-11-041940-5.
^ abPalácio, Adair Pimentel (1984). Guató: a língua dos índios canoeiros do rio Paraguai (PhD thesis) (in Portuguese). Campinas: Universidade Estadual de Campinas.
^ abPostigo, Adriana Viana (2009). Fonologia da língua Guató (MA thesis) (in Portuguese). Três Lagoas: Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul.
^Martins, Andérbio Márcio Silva (2011). Uma avaliação da hipótese de relações genéticas entre o Guató e o tronco Macro-Jê (PhD thesis) (in Portuguese). Universidade de Brasília.