The present work is the result of comparative linguistic research on data from the Apurinã language (Arawak) as currently spoken by the Apurinã people in the south-eastern part of the state of Amazonas, and on Apurinã language data registered in old documents. After internal reconstruction of the language, we reconstruct ancient lexical forms and compare them to cognate forms in languages closely related to Apurinã, Piro and Iñapari. We have as main objectives (i) to contribute to the description of the language, especially regarding the development of major dialectic aspects, and (ii) to contribute to historical-comparative studies of Arawak using a ‘bottom-up’ approach. The application of the historical-comparative method, mainly internal reconstruction, allows us to determine which lexical forms in ancient documents could correspond to different variants in modern Apurinã. This helps us to identify older forms among the variants that presently exist in the language. From this knowledge, we build hypotheses regarding the development of this lexical variety and postulate which among them is the most ancient. The results contribute to the knowledge of the past of the Apurinã language and people and to historical-comparative studies of the Arawak family.
Apurinã; Arawak; Dialects; Internal reconstruction
