Akuntsú is a Tupian language of the Tupari branch of the state of Rondônia in Brazil, spoken by the 3 remaining Akuntsu people. Peaceful contact with the Akuntsú was only made in 1995; they had been massacred by cattle ranchers in the 1980s.

It is considered unlikely that the Akuntsu language or culture will survive following the deaths of the tribe's remaining members. For this reason several observers have described the tribe as the victims of genocide. The neighbouring Kanoê have been similarly reduced in number through contact with settlers, as were the people of a man recently encountered living alone in the Igarapé Omerê reserve who was apparently the sole survivor of his tribe, referred to as the Man of the Hole.

The name "Akuntsú" comes from the Kwaza language word 'outsider Indians'.

Classification Akuntsu is a Tupian language belonging to the Tupari subfamily. It is related to Tuparí, Kepkiriwát, Makuráp, Mekéns, Waratégaya, and Wayoró. Of these, it is most closely related to Mekéns, sharing approximately 79% of its vocabulary.Galucio, A. V., & Nogueira, A. F. (2011, October). Comparative study of the Tupari branch of the Tupi family: contributions to understanding its historical development and internal classification. In Memorias del V Congreso de Idiomas Indígenas de Latinoamérica (Vol. 6, No. 8). Austin: Univ. Tex. Austin.

Phonology

Consonants Akuntsu consonants are as follows: +Akuntsu consonantsBilabialAlveolarPalatalVelarplainlab.PlosiveVoicelessptkkʷVoicedbdgAffricatetʃNasalmnŋFlapɾApproximantwj The velar nasal cannot occur word-initially.

Vowels There are 5 vowels. +Vowels of AkuntsúFrontCentralBackCloseiɨMide (ɛ)o (u)Opena In general, Akuntsu syllables can be formed with a single vowel (V), as in /i’top/ ("look"); a consonant and a vowel (CV), for example in /taˈɾa/ ("wide"); or even one vowel and two consonants (CCV, VCC or CVC), see /ˈhat/ ("snake"), /ˈkwini/ ("fork") and /oˈajt/ ("butt"). Of these, CV is the most common.

Morphology There are four open classes of words in Acuntsú (nouns, adverbs, adjectives and verbs) and five closed classes (pronouns, postpositions, idiophones, interjections and particles).

Nouns Nouns refer to concrete entities (such as epapap, "moon"). They can assume syntactic functions of arguments of verbs and postpositions, as well as being determinants or determinants in nominal determination relations and constituting the nuclei of nominal predicates.

Relational inflection Relational inflection occurs through prefixes that inflect the noun. The determinant of the nouns is the immediately preceding syntactic expression.

Unlike Tuparí and Makuráp, both also from the Tuparí family, where mutually exclusive prefixes mark the contiguity and non-contiguity of determiners, Akuntsu distinguishes between nouns that combine with the ø- allomorph and those that combine with the t allomorph. - (which mark the contiguity of the determiner, non-contiguity being an unmarked case).ARAGON, Carolina Coelho. Fonologia e aspectos morfológicos e sintáticos da língua akuntsú. 2008. Dissertation (Masters in Linguistics) - Department of Linguistics, Portuguese and Classical Languages, University of Brasília, Brasília, 2008..

Causal inflection Two suffixes determine causal inflection in Acuntsú: the locative -po and the determinative -et. The suffix -et gives nouns a specific and determined character. It is known to exist in the forms -t after a vowel and -et after a consonant.

Derivation In Acuntsú there are suffixes that modify nouns (-tin, which attenuates them, and -atʃo, which intensifies them) and one that forms them. There is also the suffix -kʷa, which in addition to forming a verb does so by bringing the idea of continuity and repetition of the action.

Composition and reduplication Another way to form names is the composition of nominal themes, such as the formation of ororope ("clothes") from ororo ("cotton") and pe ("coating"). The reduplication of the last syllable is also observed in Akuntsu, as in several other languages of the Tupian family and indicates plural, as between pi ("foot") and pipi ("feet").

Verbs Verbs in Akuntsú are divided into transitive and intransitive verbs. In general, they differ in that only transitive verbs have objects and, in Akuntsú in particular, there are certain limitations regarding the suffixes that each verb can take.

Both, however, adopt the thematic suffix -a (in the case of verbs ending in /a/, -ø is used, and for verbs ending in /o/, it is replaced by -a - as in "ko", the verb "to eat", which becomes "ka"), which marks the verb in the most diverse constructions, independently of other inflections.

Derivation Occurring through the addition of prefixes, suffixes and reduplication, the main role of derivation in verbs is to nominalize them or change their transitivity. For nominalization, the suffix -pa stands out, which determines circumstance (atʃo - "to wash", becomes atʃopa - "washer"), and the affix -i-, which only occurs in transitive verbs and forms a noun corresponding to the object resulting from the verb. An example is the formation of imi ("dead") from mi ("to kill"). The change in transitivity involves a causative structure. It can be obtained by adding the prefix mõ-, as in kara - mõkara ("to fall" - "to make [object] fall") or the suffix -ka as in morã - morãka ("to jump" - "to make [object] jump").

Tense, mood, and aspect Unlike other languages of the Tupari family, which have a marker for the past, the only clear temporal information is given by the projective marker "kom", so that the language clearly distinguishes only the "future" and the "non-future".

The marker kom occurs at the end of sentences and indicates that an event will occur in the future, generally a certain event. An example would be tekarap ita kom ("the rain will come").

There are three other very important indicators of aspect, namely the suffix -ɾa, which indicates habitualness, the morpheme ekʷa, which indicates iteration, and the suffix -kʷa, which indicates repetition/continuity of the action. Examples are:

apara koara kom. ("I will eat bananas as usual") eneme ekʷa. ("You will run many times") Konibú imi ekʷa. ("Konibú hunted them") oaawkʷa. ("I yawned continuously")

A peculiarity is that ekʷa, after an intransitive verb, represents an iteration of the action (2), while its presence after a transitive verb indicates an iteration of the object (3).

Reduplication is also an important process for the verbal aspect, occurring in the last syllable of the root, and also indicating iteration/repetition (for example, oøanam ãpika - oøanam ãpipika ["I pull my head" - "I pull and pull my head repeatedly"]).

As for the mood, Akuntsu uses the indicative mood, which has no explicit marking in the language, and is therefore the unmarked case, in addition to the imperative and interrogative moods. The imperative mood is evidenced by the suffix -tʃo, as in idaratʃo ("unfold it"). There is, however, the possibility that the imperative appears without marking (iko, "eat") The interrogative mood is marked by rising intonation and is divided between polar questions, which require affirmative or negative answers, and content questions, in which the answer concerns a specific point.

Auxiliaries There are auxiliary verbs in Akuntsu, which express dynamic or static conditions of the subject and contribute to the aspect and directionality of the verb, in addition to being able to present information about the action not included in the semantics of the main verb. They appear at the end of the sentence (with the exception of the morpheme tʃe, also observed before the main verb (1)) and modify the entire construction, and can also occur as main verbs when alone. They are: standingãmseatedjãlying downtoain motionkocomingtʃegoingka These markers contribute to aspect by expressing an ongoing event simultaneously with that of the main verb, as in mapi ata kom iko ("he is going to get the arrow").

Adverbs Adverbs form a small open class of Akuntsu. Although they are not morphologically distinct from the adjective class, adverbs differ in syntax, since they cannot act as arguments of verbs. The function of adverbs is to add to the semantics of verbs, and they can occur before or after the verb they modify. The process of reduplication is important in adverbs, since it indicates an intensification or reiteration of the characteristic described. Reduplication itself can perform an adverbial function.

Adjectives There are few adjectives in Acuntsú. They refer to abstractions such as sensations, colors, states, etc. (like akop, "hot"). They modify nouns and can be determined in nominal determination relations, as well as syntactically exercising the function of nuclei of nominal predicates.

Pronouns Pronouns constitute a closed subclass and are divided into demonstrative and personal pronouns. Among personal pronouns, there are two series: series I encodes both the subject of nominal predicates and the agent of transitive predicates (see section 7.2). They can also act as the nucleus of adverbial phrases (when modified by the locative suffix) or as the emphatic subject of intransitive verbs. They are: +PersonSingularPluralClitic1on, onekitʃe (inclusive), otʃe (exclusive)o-ki- (incl.), otʃe- (excl.)2en, enejate-jat-3tekejati-/t-, te- (referring to a previous subject) The second person plural is only used when a 3rd person not being referred to is included. Clitic pronouns mark the determiner of nouns, objects of transitive verbs and subjects of intransitive verbs. Demonstrative pronounTranslation/referenceemethis/near the speakerjȇthis/near the speaker (sitting)jȇromthat/far from the speaker and close to the listener(te)ikeaway from the speaker and listener, approximately visible

Numerals There are only two numerals in Akuntsu: kite ("one") and tɨɾɨ ("two"). To indicate larger numbers, the number two is reduplicated (tɨɾɨ tɨɾɨ is "four", for example). The numeral can appear before or after the noun it quantifies, but in studies of the language so far, it occurs before the noun more commonly. The numeral kite, in some contexts, can also mean "alone" (oɾẽbõ kite - "I am alone").

Postpositions This class includes terms that appear after nouns and express some specific semantic notion. It is approximately equivalent to prepositions in languages such as English and Portuguese, but appears after the terms it determines due to the syntactic structure of Akuntsu etʃediffuse locativeek etʃe ka(home locative go) go to the houseeterelative/comitativeta itek ete/en baj etethat is [concerning] his house/is with the buritipiInessiveon tek pi tʃopasee the inside of the housenaTranslativeikop nahe is red

Particles Particles constitute an closed class of words that can indicate evidentiality, demarcate the focus of a sentence, act as conjunctions, perform adverbial functions and even indicate existence.

Syntax

Noun phrase In Akuntsu nominal phrases, determined nouns are preceded by their respective determiners. They can also be modified by numerals, which can precede or follow the nouns they modify. There is no gender inflection of any kind, nor is there any number inflection in the noun.

Genitive constructions The genitive constructions of Akuntsu are based on the combination of nouns in which the determiner precedes the determined, as in øpi, where pi is "foot" and ø- is a prefix that determines the relational inflection.

From this, nouns can be divided into a class of dependent or inalienable nouns, generally referring to parts of a whole or elements whose existence is related to something or someone (examples are ep ["leaf"] and op ["father"]), and independent or alienable nouns, usually plants, animals or elements of nature (e.g. waʔi ["stone"] and ororo ["cotton"]).