Os Monaikó: narrativas orais e registros linguísticos

Abstract

This dissertation is a descriptive study on Monaikó, identifying them throughout the Carib family. We recorded oral narratives with Monaikó informants whose purpose was to recognize whether they would be a group or subgroup of Makuxi. For this reason, from the ethnographic point of view, the oral narratives helped so much to reveal their own identity but also a linguistic variation among speakers who declare themselves as Monaikó. From this perspective, aiming to know if there was really a language or dialect Monaikó, we appealed to the various concepts related to language, dialect and language variation to help analyze the data. The language corpus consisted of data from phonology, morphology and morphosyntax, and a list of lexical items. In methodological terms this study selected seven communities where Monaikó live: Araçá da Serra, Placa, Contão, Canta Galo, Igarapé do Galo, Pedra Branca and Enseada, all located in Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous area between the cities of Pacaraima, Normandia and Uiramutã - Roraima, and 21 informants who contributed to the research. Thus, we confirmed the existence of Monaikó dialect as well as its population, albeit preliminary, because the data analyzed were not enough to prove the existence of a language. It also became evident that, although Monaikó are already living together for many years scattered among Makuxi, they bring with them the desire to assert themselves different from Maluxi in order to strengthen their identities.