Pekodian languages

This article should specify the language of its non-English content using {{lang}} or {{langx}}, {{transliteration}} for transliterated languages, and {{IPA}} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriate ISO 639 code. Wikipedia's multilingual support templates may also be used. See why. (January 2026)

The Pekodian languages are a subgroup of the Cariban language family. The languages are spoken in Mato Grosso and Pará states of Brazil and make up the southernmost branch of Cariban.

Meira and Chousou-Polydouri (2015) consider Pekodian to have descended from Cariban migrations that came from the north, as Cariban linguistic diversity is concentrated in northern South America.

The term Pekodian was coined in 2005 by Sérgio Meira and Bruna Franchetto on the basis of a cognate word for ‘woman’ found in these languages, respectively Bakairi pekodo and Ikpeng petkom, but not found in any of the other Cariban languages compared against them.

Languages

The Pekodian languages are:

• Bakairi
• Ikpeng
• Pará Arára
• Yarumá (Suyá)
• Kuikúro (Kuikuro–Kalapalo, Matipuhy)

Internal classification

Carvalho classifies the Pekodian languages as follows.

The term Kampot is coined by Carvalho (2020) from the lexical innovation *kampot ‘fire’ defining the dialect cluster.

Sound changes

A number of sound changes are shared between Bakairí and Ikpeng:

• In intervocalic position, Proto-Cariban *p becomes w, *t becomes d (further developing to r in Ikpeng), and *k becomes g.
• Proto-Cariban *r becomes l in certain (as-yet undetermined) shared environments.
• Proto-Cariban *w becomes p word-initially (though there are some exceptions in Ikpeng).
• Proto-Cariban *t palatalizes to tʃ before e and i. (Bakairí further develops tʃ to ʃ, ʒ, s, or z.)
• Possibly, the Proto-Cariban sequence *nu-ru reduced to *n-ru, yielding Bakairí nu and Ikpeng ŋ-ru, although these results can also be explained in other ways.

Loanwords

Pekodian languages have various loanwords from non-Cariban languages, including Juruna and Arawakan languages.

Pekodian may have also influenced Bororoan and other non-Cariban language families.

References