Coordination in kaingang

Abstract

In Brazil, there are about 180 indigenous languages, however, the number of researchers who are dedicated to them is small. Many languages have not been objects of research, this fact highlights the importance and need for more linguists devoted to the study and description of these languages. The Kaingang language belongs to Jê family from Macro-Jê trunk. It is spoken by approximately 29.000 people distributed in over thirty Indigenous Lands in the States of São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, one of the indigenous languages with most speakers in Brazil. This paper is an initial approach to the structure of the sentential coordinate clauses study of this language, based on the assumptions of Descriptive and Functional Linguistics. In order to do that, this work is based on the theoretical assumptions of Payne (1997) and Haspelmath (2007). This paper consisted of data collecting with informants from Apucaraninha Indigenous Land, located in the city of Tamarana - PR. The description and analysis of these data show that Kaingang uses language particles that act as coordinators and provides the following types of semantic coordination: conjunctive, disjunctive and adversative. The objectives of this study are to approach, from a descriptive point of view, the coordinate clauses, give easier access to material support to bilingual teachers of Indian schools in northern Paraná and contribute to the description of Kaingang.