Kipeá language

Kipeá (Quipea), or Kariri, is an extinct Karirian language of Brazil. It is sometimes considered a dialect of a single Kariri language. A short grammatical treatise is available.^[1]^[2]

Documentation

Kipeá is well documented by Luiz Mamiani, a Jesuit priest who wrote a grammar^[3] and catechism^[4] of the Kipeá language during the late 1600s.^[5]

Phonology of the Kipeá language:^[6]

Consonant sounds
		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	p	t		k
Plosive	voiced	b	d		ɡ
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	(ŋ)
Affricate	voiceless		t͡s	t͡ʃ
Affricate	voiced		d͡z	d͡ʒ
Fricative			s			h
Approximant				j

A voiced plosive [ɡ] can have an allophone of [ŋ].

The morphology of the Kipeá language is predominantly isolating and analytic, unusual for a language native to the Americas.^[7]

^ Larsen, Thomas W. (1984-10-17). "Case Marking and Subjecthood in Kipeá Kirirí". Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. 10: 189. doi:10.3765/bls.v10i0.1928. ISSN 2377-1666.
^ "Língua Kiriri : Descrição do dialeto Kipeá (Azevedo 1965) - Biblioteca Digital Curt Nimuendajú". www.etnolinguistica.org. Retrieved 2025-02-11.
^ Mamiani della Rovere, Lodovico Vincenzo; Huet, Pierre Daniel; Stewart family. fmo RPJCB; Phillips, Thomas (1699). Arte de grammatica da lingua brasilica da naçam kiriri. John Carter Brown Library. Lisboa, : Na Officina de Miguel Deslandes, Impressor de Sua Mag. p. 15.
^ Mamiani, Luis Vincencio. 1698. Catecismo da doutrina christãa na lingua brasilica da naçam Kiriri. Lisboa: Miguel Deslandes.
^ Ribeiro, Eduardo Rivail. On the inclusion of the Karirí family in the Macro-Jê stock: additional evidence. Paper presented at SSILA 2011 (Pittsburgh), January 7, 2011.
^ de Azevedo, Gilda Maria Corrêa. 1965. Língua kirirí: descrição do dialeto Kipeá. (MA thesis, Universidade de Brasília; 116pp.)
^ "Feature 20A: Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives". WALS. Retrieved November 13, 2014.